


WANTED

by decaf_kitty



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Western, American Civil War, Bottom Hatake Kakashi, Bottom Umino Iruka, Drinking, Enemies to Lovers, Gambling, Guns, Lone Drifter Vigilante Iruka, M/M, Sheriff Kakashi, Threats of Violence, Top Hatake Kakashi, Top Umino Iruka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-09-29 00:10:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17192807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decaf_kitty/pseuds/decaf_kitty
Summary: A long time ago Kakashi Hatake was an outlaw known only as the Copycat Killer and Winner of a Thousand Duels... but he's taken on a new identity after helping win a war.Now Kakashi is the newest Deputy Sheriff of Konoha, a frontier town out in the Wild West. He doesn't wear a mask and eyepatch anymore, and no one has a clue that he used to be a famous outlaw.Well, except one man...Iruka Umino, former school teacher turned vigilante gunslinger, is a lone drifter who seems set on destroying everything Kakashi has created for himself.Oh, and there's another problem: Kakashi is fairly certain he shouldn't be dreaming about kissing his would-be killer... but then again... maybe he should try to kiss Iruka the next time they meet?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was told that I should post this in chapters, rather than publish it as one long huge story a while from now, so here you are, my dearest friends.
> 
> This is another one of those passing thought experiments: 
> 
> What would Kakashi/Iruka look like out in the Wild, Wild West? The Western Alternate Universe is a fun concept to play around with, even if it seems obvious that Kakashi should be "the bad guy" and Iruka, "the good guy."
> 
> So, of course, I wanted to invert the initial idea, so here's a Western AU where Kakashi's the Deputy Sheriff and Iruka is a Lone Drifter Gunslinger.
> 
> This is based around 1867, two years after the American Civil War, if that sort of thing interests you, but you don't need to know a thing about U.S. history to enjoy this one.
> 
> And, as always, I do hope you enjoy...

Just seconds after receiving the nightly telegraph of WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE news, Kakashi got word of a drunk man with a damn good hand wreaking havoc at the saloon.

Kakashi looked up from the paper to better see the Ichiraku’s nervous errand boy. It still felt strange to use both eyes; he was partially blind in the left, but he admittedly felt freer without his eyepatch. He consciously avoided the lazy drawl he’d used most of his life and instead asked the boy sharply, “You think he’ll start something?” 

The kid nodded with that idiotic civilian urgency that always grated on Kakashi’s nerves. But he waved a hand at the Ichiraku’s boy anyway, silently agreeing to intervene. The kid took off down the street, obviously eager to tell his boss that the new deputy sheriff was coming to stop any more commotion.

Kakashi perused the WANTED materials one final time before he left. 

He was unsurprised to see a few familiar names from his good old days or, more truthfully, his bad old days. The federal government was finally demanding they be hunted down, no need to bring them in alive. Kakashi didn’t immediately see anyone who he truly cared about, but he glanced through the list anyway, always secretly hoping that both Gai and Naruto continued to escape national-level notice. 

His former outlaw partner was just as out of the life as he was, but Kakashi knew the government didn’t really care about their wistful ideas of redemption. 

As for Naruto, the boy had served far too well during the war. Now that he was more renegade lawman than martyr for the good cause, Kakashi imagined the feds would eventually turn on him out of fear. But it hadn’t happened thus far, nearly two years after those last desperate days of bloody fighting. Naruto’s continued safety was too much of a damn relief for Kakashi to admit. 

As Kakashi went to stand, his hands instinctively checking both pistols on his belt, he suddenly did see Naruto’s name on the telegraphed report.

A cold fearful shock went through him as Kakashi stared down at the paper… before he realized it wasn’t Naruto who the feds wanted – _but his teacher_. 

He found himself immediately sitting back down in the chair. Kakashi ignored the two prisoners in the big jail-cell as they began jeering him for his seeming hesitation, the two men calling out insults in that dumb drunken way he’d become unfortunately accustomed to over the last two years.

Instead, Kakashi held the thin slip of telegraph paper in his hands, running his mutilated gaze over the description of…

Iruka Umino?

Kakashi hadn’t heard the name before, and he’d spent an awfully long amount of time with the boy during the war. He squinted at the paper, wondering if the feds were wrong on this one. That wasn’t impossible, not by any means… but the more he read, the more Kakashi found himself recalling Naruto’s incessant chatter, especially early on, before the battles had gotten real bad. 

The boy _had_ mentioned a teacher. Talked about how they were both orphans. How he’d been friendless, alone, and his teacher had bought him food, let him live with him, kept him safe from raids and gangs. Naruto had once gotten drunk after an ugly mess of a battle, one where he’d been all too good at killing men, and he’d confessed that his teacher was more like a surrogate father than a humble man who’d only taught him to read and write. 

Kakashi had silently watched him from across the campfire, not giving even the briefest of replies, wondering if the boy knew how frightening he was now with barely any training and how terrifying he was going to be when the whole war was over. He’d been right: Naruto had no clue what a legend he would be by the war’s end. Even though the boy wasn’t yet a man after five years of fighting, he certainly had killed hundreds of actual men by then.

The WANTED description was interesting to say the least. Naruto’s teacher – this Iruka Umino – was of some unknown non-European descent with brown skin and darker eyes and hair. He was medium height and build, known to wear his long hair up under a black hat, easily recognized by a prominent scar running horizontal across his face. He was listed as a gambler and drinker, but who wasn’t on the WANTED lists? 

More peculiar was the warning to lawman wanting to confront Naruto’s old teacher: Iruka Umino was a real danger and not to be underestimated. He’d shot sheriffs before, escaped jail several times. He was good with a few different kinds of guns, particularly pistols, but he had a penchant for knives that had given a couple of slow officers new scars. 

Iruka Umino had finally made the national-level WANTED register because he’d recently hunted down another WANTED outlaw in Suna, killed him in a wild duel in the town’s biggest street, and had not stopped to collect the bounty. In real damn contrast, Iruka had apparently shot at lawmen who’d approached him after the incident; he’d killed a deputy sheriff and injured two others. He’d escaped Suna and was supposedly somewhere south of Kakashi’s town, Konoha.

Kakashi found himself leaving the jail in the semi-capable hands of one of his officers, barely giving the man a wave, before meandering down to Ichiraku’s saloon. He wondered if there were many people like Naruto’s boyhood teacher – good folks who had gotten destroyed by the war and had gone vigilante in the aftermath. 

He knew there probably more of those men than ones like him. 

The war had done Kakashi a strange and unexpected good, letting him hide amongst government troops, rise through the ranks, get medals and money, allow him to leave the outlaw life. He’d gone back to being called by his birth name, taken off the bandana and eyepatch, used all his skills of bank-robbing and banditry to kill men for legal cash. It was an absolutely insane risk, and he was still surprised it had worked so well for him. 

But, then again, Kakashi had always worn a bandana during his outlaw years and a leather eyepatch, too, along with his black broad-brimmed hat. When he removed those parts of his perpetual attire, he was barely recognizable to his own gang, let alone lawmen. Sure, his white-silver hair was more noticeable than the usual shades of black, brown, red, and blonde out in the world, but there were plenty of men going prematurely grey out on the frontier, the stress of life dragging color right out of people both good and bad. 

At the start of the war, Kakashi had entered the recruitment station, joining up as a beat-up frontiersman, given the low rank of private. At the conflict’s end, he had ventured out both a decorated captain and a clean man with good references.

Only a few weeks after the war, he’d heard Konoha out further west had an opening for a new deputy sheriff. Kakashi had found himself easing up to the jail not as a mask-wearing bandit ready to murder lawmen and break out his friends – but as a decent man interested in employment after years of hard military service. He’d tried not to look alarmed or amused when he’d gotten the position; Kakashi was similarly willful in his controlling his surprise when he got the first paycheck of his life and had to deposit most of it in an actual bank.

As he pushed through the double doors of Ichiraku’s saloon, Kakashi had no trouble finding the drunk man whose good luck was causing trouble. He was in the far back right of the open-area bar, fallen forward over the table, still clumsily pushing away another man’s hand from a fistful of green dollar bills. The saloon was terrifically busy tonight, probably due to the recent gold rush further west on the same trail, strangers taking rest here in Konoha before heading further out in the frontier. This drunken fool of a man was probably one of those who expected to find some fortune here in town – but much more down the line, with his hands going deep in a stream and rising out with gold dust on his fingers.

Kakashi slunk up to the table, recognizing right away that the drunk man was actually rather damn good at cards. His competitors were probably more pissed that he was such a fine card player while soused out of his mind more than they were worried he was about to start a brawl. And the man was very drunk, face-down on the wood table, his black hat pushed back. 

Yet the man still flipped over his playing cards, revealing an impressive winning hand, all while not looking up at anyone, face smashed flat into the table. 

Before he could say anything, Kakashi caught the gaze of a Konoha regular, Genma Shiranui, who was sitting just off to the side of the poker table. The other man was always even-keeled, far too calm in a brawl, and keenly aware of tension. Genma chewed at the senbon that he always held in his mouth; the metal needle was rotating slowly between his teeth, showing to Kakashi’s observant eye that he was truly on edge. 

So… there actually was something to Ichiraku’s concern.

Pressing his hands into the pockets of his short coarse sheriff coat, Kakashi started to address the group of irritated Konoha with a “Well, gentleman, sorry to break up the –” when the drunken victor rolled back upwards in his chair and blearily tried to focus on Kakashi.

_And it was Iruka Umino, Naruto’s old teacher, no fucking doubt about it._

Kakashi schooled his face not to fill with shock. He steadily met the man’s half-opened brown eyes and finished his sentence: “ – game, but we’re trying to keep things peaceful tonight. Why don’t we wrap this up, and I take the winner outside, get him some cold air?”

The drunk perfectly matched the description of Naruto’s old teacher. He was much more brown-skinned and dark-featured than Kakashi, probably some ethnicity indigenous to the area. But the real reason that Kakashi felt comfortable identifying the man as Iruka Umino was the ridiculously long, deep scar across his face. It was a strange mark, as if someone had held him down and gotten loose and stupid as they tried to kill him and had failed spectacularly. 

When he suddenly spoke, Iruka sounded garbled, like he’d shoved cotton in his mouth, including cotton seeds, too. “Sheriff! These men are being cruel,” Iruka whined – _actually whined_ – and he looked absurdly piteous, his brown eyes getting big and weak and watery. He gestured with his right hand, the one holding the winning flush, at his ring of furious competitors. “They’re saying I’m a cheat!” 

A smile shakily rose to Iruka’s face as he promised, a strange tilt to his voice, “I _never_ cheat.”

Kakashi kept eye contact with the man. He was running through the WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE description again and again in his head: _Iruka Umino is dangerous, not to be underestimated._

“Well,” Kakashi finally drawled, realizing after a moment that he was falling back on old outlaw habits, his voice going darker and smoother and sounding utterly bored. “I believe you, but they don’t, so we’re done here.” 

Iruka slanted a low disapproving look towards his adversaries. He dropped the cards unceremoniously and swept up the cash into his hand, shoving it down into his trouser pocket. 

“Gentlemen, you were _not_ a delight, but instead a horror, and I hope we never meet again,” Iruka announced in a rapid, overly fluid way, slurring the final words together. He seemed to either not catch or ignore the way that two of the other men started to push back their chairs, readying for a fight, and instead tried to stand and walk away from the poker table.

Kakashi found himself swiftly moving forward – 

Because Iruka managed only a few steps before his legs betrayed him, and he started to stumble forward, reaching out a clumsy hand to grab the chair of a competitor. But the man jerked his chair away, not wanting to assist the man who had taken his money. One of Iruka’s knees loudly smashed into the floor, the rest of him obviously about to follow, before Kakashi could forcefully grab him under his armpits. 

Up close, Kakashi got a better look at Iruka’s attire: a long black duster overcoat, a dirty blue-and-white striped shirt with dark suspenders, a thick leather belt with a dull silver-metal buckle, and overly patched brown trousers. Kakashi’s hands were inside Iruka’s coat, forcing him upwards, his own scarred face far too close to a man he _knew_ had just killed a deputy sheriff a few days earlier. Iruka had evidently undone his shirt down to his sternum, showing more than a slight hint of thick tan muscle. 

Iruka _reeked_ of corn whiskey. His head was down against Kakashi’s chest, his right cheek crushed against the shiny silver sheriff star on Kakashi’s jacket. 

Then he laughed suddenly while using Kakashi as leverage to get back on his feet. “Oh, Sheriff,” Iruka declared, obviously very tickled by Kakashi’s instinctive rush to help him. “You’re such a good guy, saving me from liars and keeping me from cracking my face open.” He stood shakily, trying to look at Kakashi, a wide smile on his scarred face. “I’d buy you a drink, but you’re kicking me out of the bar, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Kakashi replied, working his tone to be relaxed. He was happy to have his hands back near his pistols, which he checked on instinct, finding Iruka hadn’t taken or adjusted either one. Kakashi had gotten a glimpse of Iruka’s gun – it was a nice-looking and eerily clean pistol holstered on the right side of his belt. He hadn’t had time to check for knives, but he imagined the man had those, too. 

Iruka gave an exaggerated shrug, lifting up both of his hands into the air, feigning battlefield surrender. “That’s fine, I should head out, anyway,” he admitted before starting to walk forward again. As Kakashi expected, the man failed to move with any grace, and, before he knew it, Kakashi had slung Iruka’s arm over his shoulder and was dragging him out of the saloon. 

Just as they exited Ichiraku’s, Iruka laughed low under his breath. Kakashi glanced at him, trying to swallow down the insane pulse of his heart in his throat. Iruka wasn’t looking at him as he muttered, a twisted smile on his lips, “They’re going to try and kill me, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” Kakashi answered with flat indifference in his voice. He had plans for this Iruka Umino, Naruto’s old teacher: he was going to bring the man back to the jail and turn him over to the feds alive and in one piece. He wasn’t going to let some other lawman kill a man so obviously fallen from grace; he knew even Konoha law officers would desire Iruka’s extralegal death after reading the WANTED description of Iruka’s successful duel and deadly shoot-out with the Suna sheriffs. 

He was able to drag Iruka fairly far away from Ichiraku’s and rather close to the jail when Iruka suddenly stiffened against him. “Oh, shit,” Iruka breathed. Kakashi turned to look at him, trying to continue to move them both, but the other man had gone still, practically becoming a dead weight. He realized once he saw Iruka’s face what had happened: the familiar pinched expression of a man just about to vomit up his guts now stretched over Iruka’s scarred features. 

Iruka shook his head wildly as if he could dismiss his nausea like irritating flies. But his expression went worse, scrunching up badly, and he shoved off of Kakashi with much more force than Kakashi would have expected for a drunk man. Iruka tore off towards the alleyway between two closed shops – a general store and an abandoned laundry service – and he was almost instantly hunched over, one hand clutching at the building, as he threw up whiskey into the dirt.

Kakashi wandered up behind him. He had the fleeting curious thought what Naruto would think of his old teacher now, both a poor winner and a whiskey-drinking troublemaker. Kakashi wondered if he got Iruka safely to jail if he should contact Naruto, get the boy to come visit his old teacher, see if he talk some sense into the man before Iruka got sent off to prison, likely to become a convict leased out to do labor for the state. 

Maybe the boy would write his old teacher letters? Keep his spirit alive?

As it was now, Iruka was crouching down in the dark of an alleyway, halfway-carefully trying to avoid getting vomit on his boots. His frame was bigger than Kakashi’s – stockier, broader shoulders, although he was shorter – but Kakashi had seen Iruka’s face well enough before. Iruka could definitely pass for pretty, even with his huge scar. Kakashi imagined the man was quite the hit with the ladies, when he wasn’t drinking himself to death, anyway.

“C’mon,” Kakashi finally said. He was impatient to get Naruto’s old teacher out of sight, even though he kept his voice sounding bored and disinterested. He wasn’t sure how Konoha’s other law enforcement would respond to Iruka; the man was just too damn recognizable with that scar on his face. Plus, Iruka was clearly out of commission: his entire body was shaking as he threw up what Kakashi was disgusted to realize was almost all liquid, probably only whiskey.

As he reached down to grab Iruka’s shoulder, Kakashi instead found himself badly caught off-guard.

Iruka stood with far more ability than he’d shown just seconds earlier, his pistol tight in his right hand, his left hand snatching the collar of Kakashi’s sheriff jacket and white shirt. 

He yanked _hard_ \---

And Kakashi felt rather stupefied to realize he’d been spun and was being shoved against the side wall of the general store. Then he was staring at Iruka with both eyes – his intact one and his half-blind one – as Iruka pushed his pistol, ugly and mean, against Kakashi’s stomach. 

It took Kakashi a second to recognize the whole thing had been a front, a façade. 

Sure, Iruka had been drinking, but he was more sober than he’d first appeared.

Kakashi knew because Iruka was now staring up at him, his brown eyes remarkably brighter, his mouth a straight even line. He looked so much more serious and composed that Kakashi rapidly gathered that this was how Naruto’s old teacher had gotten such a deadly reputation: he used his innocent charm and foolish behavior to his advantage, and probably his pretty face, too. 

“So, you’re going to kill me?” Kakashi asked, easy and calm. He could smell the corn whiskey on Iruka’s hot breath with their faces were so close together. He could see the creases in the skin around Iruka’s intense brown eyes from age and stress. Kakashi glanced over the surreal slice of Iruka’s scar, so clean and straight that he could tell the initial wound must have been made with a smooth-edged, finely sharpened knife.

His own scar, the one through his red half-blind left eye, was a little shaky on the edges. Like Iruka’s, it was a knife wound and should have been fatal, but he had avoided most of the strike, costing him only skin and some of his eye – and not his throat and his life.

Iruka’s eyes were searching his. 

Then Iruka’s pistol pressed harder into Kakashi’s stomach, grinding the metal into his abdominal muscles, Kakashi’s thin white shirt not protecting him at all. 

“It really is you,” Iruka suddenly said, a disbelieving half-smile shifting his serious features.

It was as if freezing cold water had abruptly replaced all the hot blood in Kakashi’s body. Something about Iruka’s words – and his flat but pleased tone – made the statement too terribly clear: Iruka knew who he was, not just Kakashi Hatake the Deputy Sheriff of Konoha, but – also –

“The Copycat Killer,” Iruka continued, his smile swiftly twisting into outright seething. His face went tight and dark, and the pistol against Kakashi’s stomach became a more persistent pain, a vibrant warning of impending murder. Iruka announced Kakashi’s other title, the one that had made him a pre-war legend, but Iruka said it with absolutely no admiration: “Winner of a Thousand Duels.”

The other man was pressing up against him, his muscular body a sheer force against Kakashi’s leaner frame. He seemed intent on devouring Kakashi alive, blowing his intestines to bits, carving up Kakashi with his piercing dagger-like gaze. After a second, Iruka added, his voice low and sick, his eyes fixed on Kakashi’s, “Bank robber, stagecoach robber, train robber.”

Kakashi had the back of his head against the general store wall, having lost his white broad-brimmed hat when Iruka had spun him. He knew his white-silver hair was exposed; he knew his scar and red eye were visible, too… but they always were out in the open with this new identity. 

Just how Iruka recognized him as the Copycat Killer – that was the real mystery. 

Kakashi had never showed his face during his outlaw days. A year ago, he had scared the shit out of Gai when he’d visited his friend’s cattle ranch on the border. His old partner hadn’t seen him but a handful of times with everything off his face, so Gai had thought Kakashi was a marauding thief come to steal cows. Kakashi had to confess a few dumb sentimental stories they’d shared over the years before Gai had dropped his shotgun and pulled him into an excruciating embrace.

“You’re Naruto’s old teacher,” Kakashi noted suddenly, surprising himself.

He surprised Iruka, too: the other man’s eyes instantly lost their cold hard edge before briefly swimming with warm confusion and concern. But Iruka got himself under control in quick order, his gaze changing to one of frustration and suspicion.

“And you’re his old captain,” Iruka accused in turn, his voice like poison.

Kakashi imagined that solved a part of the mystery. Somehow and at some point, Naruto Uzumaki had told his former teacher about his superior officer during the war, maybe even writing him when the war was still being fought. Kakashi wondered just what Naruto had written, something he had never really cared about until now. 

Judging from Iruka’s expression and the pistol making close friends with his internal organs, it didn’t seem like Naruto had done him any favors.

But… Naruto had only known him under this guise, that of Kakashi Hatake, the man who would later become deputy sheriff. Kakashi had never confessed to Naruto a thing about his pre-war adventures. He would have _never_ told Naruto about his terribly won titles like Copycat Killer and Winner of a Thousand Duels.

Before he could ask Iruka how _he_ had pieced everything together, Kakashi noticed that Iruka’s expression was faltering, wavering. Iruka blinked hard, just once, while still staring at Kakashi from only inches away. His breathing was coming out quicker, more uncertain. Kakashi watched as Iruka worked his mouth oddly for a moment before he clearly gave in and bit anxiously at the side of his bottom lip. 

It was a strange look on a man holding a gun straight against another man’s stomach.

After a moment, Kakashi murmured, Iruka’s strange behavior seemingly affecting and infecting him: “He talked about you. Said you helped him when no one else did. He called you his father.”

Iruka went very still. His big brown eyes remained locked on Kakashi’s. 

A few seconds passed where Kakashi was certain Iruka was going to pull the trigger, but instead he felt Iruka pull the gun off his stomach – and then – 

Iruka smashed the side of his face with the pistol. 

The blow instantaneously burst skin by Kakashi’s scarred eyebrow, blood blossoming outwards as Kakashi stumbled to the side, disoriented by the hit to his head. His hands instinctively went to both of his own pistols, producing them from their holsters, readying to shoot right away.

But, as Kakashi looked up, Iruka was running down the end of the alleyway and was nearly out of sight. 

Kakashi leveled his right hand, took the shot – and sharply blew through Iruka’s pantsleg, the bullet going through cloth and burying in the dirt of the side street. 

He rushed after Iruka on battlefield instinct. 

When he whipped over to the next street, Kakashi realized with mystifying, heart-pounding confusion that Iruka had vanished. He looked towards the rooftops – and inside the closed stores – but, as the minutes passed and no further sound or sign of Iruka emerged, Kakashi faced the bewildering truth: Naruto’s old teacher, Iruka Umino, the man who knew his real identity, the drunk who had just tricked him, had totally disappeared.

He’d escaped justice again.

 _Well, not for long,_ Kakashi determined sharply, fury lighting within him. He hadn’t tolerated men hitting him during his outlaw days and definitely not during the war. Nothing had changed now that he was deputy sheriff. He wasn’t going to allow Iruka to escape for any idiotic sentimental reasons, either. Naruto would have to deal with his teacher’s shitty decisions. 

Naruto could attend Iruka’s funeral if he wanted, or he could keep away like he’d done ever since the war ended.

But Kakashi was going to find Iruka Umino, and he was going to kill him.

After all, Kakashi’s life and livelihood were at stake. No one could know the Copycat Killer, the Winner of a Thousand Duels, was the new Deputy Sheriff of Konoha.

Not even Naruto’s old father figure.

No matter how pretty he was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year's Eve, darlings.
> 
> Between October 8 and December 31, 2018, I wrote and published 129,069 words of Kakashi/Iruka fan fiction in my free time. So, in other words, I wrote 532 pages of Kakashi/Iruka sexfest-vulnerability stories in about 3 months.
> 
> It's a good hobby, what can I say? Thanks for all your kindness in 2018. Here's to 2019! Love you all. As always, please be kind to yourselves.
> 
> ___

It was three days later when Kakashi heard a rancher at the general store claim he’d seen a light moving in the window of the abandoned Sarutobi homestead. The man blamed ghosts, of course, but Kakashi had killed too many men to believe in specters haunting people or places. Since Hiruzen Sarutobi had died early the war, leaving behind only a young grandson, his house had been deserted, vandalized, and partially burned down. The place was considered uninhabitable. 

Kakashi had never met Hiruzen, of course, but he’d visited the Sarutobi homestead during his first few months as deputy sheriff. The four-building compound was in a bad state of disrepair: the barn was just a pile of ash, as were the stables, but the main house and out-house had impressively endured five years of wildlife and weather sneaking inside. 

Still, there was no reason for a light to be in the window of the Sarutobi ranch house – unless there was a certain man residing inside.

And Kakashi knew all too well that Iruka Umino had not come to Konoha for a peaceful visit.

Iruka had turned up because he wanted to shoot the Copycat Killer dead. Sure, he hadn’t managed it thus far, even with his perfect opportunity in the alleyway, but Kakashi was confident that Iruka was lurking nearby, waiting for another chance to kill him. 

Admittedly, Kakashi wasn’t sure _why_ Iruka wanted to kill him. 

The first night after Iruka jumped him, when Kakashi had gone to sleep in his usual hotel room, the one he’d kept for two years now, Kakashi had wondered if Iruka was mad about Naruto and the war – or perhaps there was something else inspiring his homicidal intent. The man had certainly seemed uneasy when Kakashi acknowledged Iruka’s former identity as a school teacher. He’d grown even more unsettled when Kakashi told him what Naruto had said after that one horrible battle. 

He sometimes thought about _why_ he had told Iruka about Naruto’s drunken confession.

Had Kakashi thought he was about to die? Had he wanted to let the man know that the boy had once treasured him and valued him as a father? Had Kakashi wanted to prove that he _also_ knew secrets, ones that could hurt, ones that could drive a man mad?

The second night, Kakashi had something unexpected happen to him: he had a dream. 

He almost never dreamed, so the whole thing had left him confused and strangely panicked. 

In his dream, he did what he often did after bad situations: Kakashi replayed the whole scene, over and over, trying to pin down the littlest details, determining exactly what had gone wrong. 

He could better see signs of Iruka’s actual objectives now that he knew he’d been duped. The way that Iruka had looked at him when he first approached – bleary-eyed, sure, but also directly at him with hidden intensity. The way that Iruka had fallen and held onto him – clumsy, certainly, but also done in an attempt to test Kakashi’s speed and strength. The way that Iruka had gone along with Kakashi so easily out of the saloon – drunkenly, yes, but not so bad off that he didn’t also have a strategy in mind.

But it was in the alleyway when Kakashi realized he was dreaming and not just replaying events in his head for practice, because there, between the general store and laundry service business, when Iruka had first shoved a pistol against his stomach, Kakashi hadn’t just stared down at the other man in astonishment and annoyance.

Instead, in his dream, he kissed Iruka.

He’d kissed Naruto’s old teacher… an outlaw and sheriff-killer… a man nationally listed as WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE.

In Kakashi’s dream, he hadn’t minded Iruka’s gun pressed into his abdomen. He’d grabbed the other man by the shoulder and the back of the head, pushing back against him, kissing him in a wild frantic way. Kakashi had licked urgently at Iruka’s lips, wanting him to open his mouth. He had forced their groins together, desperate for harder and rougher contact between them. 

Iruka had given one single sweet, soft, little gasp. Iruka’s free hand touched and then tightened over Kakashi’s silver sheriff star. He writhed against Kakashi like a restless, wanting… whore.

Kakashi woke up sharply, blinking rapidly with just one eye at first, before he groggily realized that he could use both eyes because he wasn’t wearing his eyepatch anymore. He had stared uselessly down at his erection, somehow bewildered to find himself aroused. 

He’d always been interested in men, well before the war, well before Iruka Umino. While there weren’t too many men willing to sell their bodies on the frontier, Kakashi had visited a good number of them throughout the west, particularly the young men with clean bills of health. He’d tried women more than a few times because they were simply more available, but Kakashi usually found himself closing his eyes and imagining a lean, muscular man underneath him instead of a curvy, fleshy lady. 

The three-quarter moon hung high in the soft night sky as Kakashi rode towards the Sarutobi homestead, intent on finding Iruka to do just one thing – kill him. 

He wasn’t thrilled that he had what amounted to a rather tame sex dream about a man who he was now riding off to kill, but Kakashi knew if Iruka revealed his past identity to the locals _or_ the feds then Kakashi would suddenly be at the top of the WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE lists. Sure, Kakashi wanted to keep his job, but more importantly, he didn’t want to be hunted down and shot – not after what he’d done in the war, not after he’d given up his life as an outlaw.

He hitched his horse rather far from the Sarutobi homestead and walked the rest of the way. Kakashi was all too skilled at subtly approaching city-distant ranches; he wasn’t sure how many frontier homesteads that he’d robbed during his days in the gang. He still used some of his old talents as a deputy sheriff, but he could tell this particular time was different. Kakashi was very intent on staying unseen, much more so than normal. Although he didn’t initially spot a lamp or light in the homestead, he recognized his senses were warning him that something was indeed happening at the Sarutobi homestead.

Then Kakashi finally saw it – a slight shadow of movement in the top back room – a fully-intact non-burnt space that he knew was Hiruzen’s bedroom. 

Someone _was_ there. And that someone could be Iruka Umino.

Kakashi had no problems climbing Sarutobi’s two-story house: he was one of the best in his gang in terms of scaling walls, train cars, trees, whatever else needed to be conquered. He definitely felt a bit odd wearing his short sheriff jacket and white broad-brimmed hat during this climb, but they didn’t restrict his movement, so he moved easily up the outside of the building. 

He hung by the window where he’d seen the shadow and took a quick glance inside. 

And… yes, it was him. _There was Iruka Umino._ His back was to the window as he stood in front of Hiruzen’s open roll desk, holding an old letter in his right hand. 

Iruka was wearing nearly the same thing that he’d been in three days ago, but he’d removed his overcoat and hat, showing that he felt inexplicably comfortable in the Sarutobi homestead. His brown hair was tied back, exposing his neck and leaving a bit loose to frame his face. Without his coat, Iruka only wore his blue-and-white striped shirt and brown trousers held up by dark suspenders. The near diagonal slant of his belt attracted Kakashi’s attention, especially the gun holster on his right side. Iruka’s damnably familiar pistol was there, readily available for him to use as needed. 

Kakashi took out his own pistol, preparing himself to take the life of Naruto’s old teacher.

He didn’t try to open the window: he simply burst through the glass, keeping his head down, letting his white hat protect his face.

Kakashi was just as quick as he had been five years earlier, particularly since he was rather damn sure that Iruka meant to kill him or be killed. He ignored the loud crunch of glass under his boots, his messy gaze fixed on Iruka as the other man turned around, immediately dropping the letter, his right hand going for his pistol. 

But Kakashi was swift – much swifter than Iruka, who he thought was ultimately not too far off from being a school teacher – and he had the man slammed up against the wall a second later.

He didn’t play any of the games that Iruka had, such as keeping his gun pressed against the other man out of both of their sights. 

Instead, Kakashi had the muzzle of his pistol against the soft flesh of Iruka’s throat, right under his jawbone, pressed against Iruka’s jugular vein. A single bullet would tear through the frightfully vital vein – then through Iruka’s mouth – then into his brain and skull the very moment that Kakashi pulled the trigger. 

Kakashi used his left hand to force Iruka’s right forearm against the wall, making sure the man’s hand wasn’t holding his own pistol. 

He realized he’d lost his hat once again – _Christ save me_ – but Kakashi was too focused on keeping track of Iruka Umino, who was indeed dangerous… and not to be underestimated.

But Iruka looked much more alarmed and surprised than Kakashi would have expected. His brown eyes, which had been dark and critical in the alleyway, were both wide and unsettled upon seeing Kakashi again. He looked peculiarly flushed, as if he’d been thoroughly distracted and was now filling with embarrassment as he realized how inattentive he had been to allow Kakashi to sneak up on him. His right arm flexed underneath Kakashi’s hand, not so much testing Kakashi’s strong grip, but moving with obvious uncertainty, like he was unsure what he should be doing or trying to do. Iruka’s chest was held tight and high, and it took Kakashi a moment to realize that the man was barely breathing as they stared at each other in silence.

All of a sudden, Kakashi asked angrily, startling both of them, “How do you know me?”

Iruka looked at him with large mystified brown eyes for several beats – before he promptly narrowed his gaze and his face fell into a dark scowl. Tilting his head upwards and away from the pistol at his throat, Iruka spat out, audibly seething with fury: “Because you robbed me, you son of a bitch. You don’t even remember!”

Kakashi stared blankly back at him. He didn’t lessen the pressure of the pistol on Iruka’s throat, but he did feel a strange clenching feeling contorting his stomach. He must have appeared confused, even though he was trying to control it from his expression, because Iruka set his jaw tight, scowling even harder at him, and snapped out, “I knew it. You’ve robbed so many people, you can’t even keep track of them.” 

Kakashi realized that he was blushing, which made him very pissed, but he only maintained his serious searching stare on the other man. Iruka was more than comfortable continuing his furious monologue, looking up at Kakashi like he had been struck too many times on the head: “Academy Bank, six years ago, you broke in with your gang, I was there taking out some cash.” 

Iruka’s brown eyes went even more livid, and Kakashi felt himself shrink away just slightly, even though he made sure to keep his gun jammed up against Iruka’s throat. 

“You tried to take my money, and I wouldn’t let you, so you punched me in the face,” Iruka hissed at Kakashi, who blinked in real surprise. He didn’t recall the incident at all. Safe to say, he had hit hundreds of people when he was robbing them, often to get them to give up cash. After all, times before the war were remarkably hard, especially on the frontier. 

Plus, folks always hated parting with money. 

But for Kakashi to run into one of his… one of his victims, six years later? And it just happened to be Naruto’s childhood teacher?

No… Kakashi knew that Iruka had meant to find him. Theirs wasn’t an accidental meeting. This was no coincidence. 

Iruka’s lips did a strange quirking motion, and Kakashi realized after a moment that Iruka was giving him a very mean half-smile. “I punched you in the face,” Iruka reminded him, sounding incredibly smug that he had done so. “Your eyepatch got pushed aside, and I saw your eye, which pissed you off, so you knocked me out.” 

_Oh, so Iruka had actually seen him…_

Iruka glanced more deliberately at Kakashi’s left eye – the one he was referencing – the half-blind scarlet-red one with the scar through it. “You didn’t kill me,” he remarked more softly. While Kakashi felt his brain painfully rolling through memories and old traumas, he also watched as Iruka’s gaze trailed down to the very end of his vertical facial scar. 

The man’s long, dark eyelashes were damn distracting.

“Imagine my surprise a year later when Naruto writes home about his eccentric captain with a scarred red eye and silver-metal hair,” Iruka whispered, soft and nearly soundless. 

His brown eyes flickered up towards Kakashi’s. Iruka’s scowl had faded, replaced by a more miserable frown. He looked almost unwilling to say more, but then suddenly Iruka’s scarred face turned shockingly passionate. Kakashi didn’t even have time to tense before Iruka was seething at him again while staring deep in his eyes. It seemed as if he didn’t notice or care that Kakashi had a pistol trained on his jugular vein as he viciously asserted, “You turned him into something _terrible_!”

So that was it – or was a part of it, because there was no ignoring that Iruka was pissed at being robbed and punched in the face before the war. But, still, Iruka seemed _especially_ mad that the boy had changed, that Naruto wasn’t still a little kid learning his ABCs, but someone darker and more conflicted, with new bloodstains on his hands and heart and soul.

And Iruka was blaming Kakashi for that, huh? Because, of course, it had been the _evil_ Copycat Killer’s bad influence – and not the horrors of war, the endless and meaningless bloodshed, the betrayals of best friends on the battlefield…

No, it was easier to blame the monstrous legendary outlaw with the ugly scar and half-blind red eye and strange white-silver hair. 

_Of course Iruka thought it was Kakashi’s fault._

Kakashi found himself replying, a real dangerous heat behind his voice, even as he worked to keep it level and even, “He’s not your student anymore. He wanted to defend his country.” Kakashi could feel disgust climbing up his face as he spoke. He could tell Iruka had _not_ been a soldier in the war; he’d probably been a pacifist, too, though clearly _that_ had changed. 

Whatever Iruka had been before, it was someone who Kakashi wanted nothing to do with. 

Staring back at him, Kakashi declared thickly, unreasonably disappointed with the other man, “So what if he’s got scars now. A boy needs scars to become a man.”

Iruka was breathing hard now. His face had shifted back to his scowl, and he snapped out, perilously unmindful of the gun on his throat, “Because it turned out so well for you.”

Kakashi tasted bile on his tongue. He was surprised at the sensation, didn’t understand it. It took him a long distorted second to realize that he felt bitter about Iruka’s comment. 

He was taken aback by it. 

No, Kakashi’s scar had not improved his life. He’d had to become a permanent outlaw after taking the injury to his face, unable to balance a few hours of banditry a week with good legal employment with such a fearsome scar on full display. The eyepatch did him no good, either: he looked ridiculously cruel with the black leather covering his maimed eye, and the scar still reached up through his forehead and down his cheek past it, anyway. With a bandana and hat, Kakashi could barely manage to seem normal-looking, but he also appeared quite the dastardly criminal.

So he had just went that way, turning to stealing and murder when society had decided he didn’t fit the proper look of a peace-abiding citizen.

During the war, no one had cared about Kakashi’s scar _or_ his red eye: they were far too pleased with his keen instincts with rifle, revolver, saber, sword, and fists to worry what he had been before the fighting.

Iruka shook his head, a strangely defeated expression coming over his own scarred face. Some of the fire was leaving him, his shoulders slumping, even as he kept his head turned away from Kakashi’s pistol on his throat. Iruka sounded surprisingly despondent as he looked down at the tight space between them and remarked lowly, “That money was for school supplies…” He shot Kakashi one last infuriated look before he bit out under his breath, “You jackass.”

Kakashi immediately shrugged, ready to refute the insult. “Yeah, well,” he started but then trailed off, unexpectedly finding that he wasn’t sure what to say. He realized that he was staring at Iruka’s brown eyes while they were downcast with Iruka’s gaze fixed on his white shirt, dark blue vest, and blue silk tie. 

How times had changed. Kakashi only wore dirty threadbare black clothes when he was an outlaw. Now he was dressed in near finery, whereas Iruka, the former clean-living schoolteacher, was wearing torn, faded, even patched clothes… some of which looked stolen off the bodies of dead men.

Kakashi felt bizarrely trapped, almost as if he was the one shoved against the wall. He was defensive and irritated; he was tired, and his soul felt tattered. If he pushed himself enough, Kakashi could remember some of the incident that had clearly traumatized Iruka: he mostly recalled the crack of Iruka’s fist on his sore eye socket, and that he had felt like an idiot that a civilian had gotten the drop on him. In some distant blurry memory, he thought he could see himself punching a man unconscious in the pristine marble stone setting of a bank. 

Why hadn’t he killed Iruka back then…? He had definitely killed plenty of men for much less...

There was suddenly a weird sharp pain in his stomach – and not an emotional pain – more like a –

Iruka glanced back up at him, his lips going tight. 

“Do you have a knife pressed against my gut?” Kakashi asked dryly, because he already knew the answer.

In response, Iruka only rose both dark eyebrows at him, looking at him like he was stupid. It was perfectly obvious that he was digging a pocket-knife into Kakashi’s stomach with his left hand. While holding Iruka’s right arm against the wall and pressing the pistol to Iruka’s throat with his other hand, Kakashi knew he could not immediately twist the knife out of Iruka’s grip. 

Instead, he looked in dead-eyed frustration and blunt disbelief at the other man. “You won’t be the first person to stab me in the stomach – or the last,” Kakashi explained flatly, feeling irritation swarming over his words. He shifted the muzzle of his pistol across the tense muscles of Iruka’s neck, making the teacher’s eyes widen in sudden uncontrolled terror. 

Kakashi leaned forward, bodily pushing into the other man, not caring when the knife cut through his vest and shirt and dug more sharply into his flesh. He noted in a dark, unforgiving tone, “But I’ll definitely be the first and only person to shoot you in the throat.”

He could feel Iruka’s grip loosening, and Kakashi moved quick to take advantage. He dropped Iruka’s right arm for just a moment to disarm him of the knife, then he grabbed the man’s left wrist, wrenching it back up to meet Iruka’s right wrist. It took Kakashi a serious moment to wrangle him into place, but he finally managed to force Iruka’s wrists together, keeping both of them solidly pinned against the wall above Iruka’s head. 

Kakashi was having to use his whole body to keep the rest of Iruka in place. They were flush together in a rough, awful way that had their chests and pelvises pushed remorselessly against each other. Kakashi’s pistol was suddenly all too firm and unyielding against Iruka’s throat; he found himself applying more pressure as he begun to feel blood seeping from the new wound in his stomach. He realized he was breathing heavily, furious that he hadn’t noticed – again! for _the third time_ apparently! – Iruka nearly getting the one up on him.

But Kakashi began noticing a change sweeping over Iruka – and it was a peculiar one, the sort of thing that made him stop thinking impulsively in instinctive bloodlust and blind rage.

Iruka was afraid. 

Kakashi knew the appearance of fear on men, as well as women and children. He hadn’t seen the emotion on Iruka Umino until now – or, more accurately, he didn’t remember the look from six years ago when he robbed Iruka at the Academy Bank.

Witnessing Iruka becoming afraid was incredibly fascinating: the man was almost visibly shifting from his vigilante gunslinger persona, the one that earned him a space on the national WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE list… to his older image, the one that Naruto had described as humble and kind, a young man who wanted to do good and be good and teach good. 

It was as if industrial machinery was noisily clicking back into its proper place.

Because Kakashi could tell that he was changing, too. 

As Iruka transitioned back to his old self, Kakashi was smoothly regressing back to _his_ old days as the Copycat Killer and the Winner of a Thousand Duels. His shoulders were dropping, relaxing in self-assurance, and he could feel his facial expression easing and losing tension. Kakashi understood quite well that he was growing in confidence at the very same rate that Iruka was _losing_ his conviction and furious calm. 

But it was the older kind of confidence that Kakashi hadn’t felt in some time: the truly dark stuff, the glorious certainty of a man who could kill and steal and get away with it all. 

It felt good, sinisterly good. 

Iruka was carefully watching Kakashi’s face: he could easily see the dark change coming across Kakashi. Iruka was instinctively responding to the transformation as he himself grew more nervous and unsettled. Kakashi realized he was smiling loosely at the other man only when Iruka gave a shaky inhale, fluttering his eyes, and looked weakly away from Kakashi, almost seeming to forget the pistol still pressed at his throat. 

The other man had begun to tremble against him. 

Kakashi was so very cruelly pleased to _feel_ Iruka’s fear with their bodies so flush together. 

Immobilized with his arms over his head and pinned to the wall, Iruka was obviously unprepared for Kakashi to lean forward and more closely examine his scar as he continued to hold the pistol against Iruka’s throat. Kakashi could feel the man startle at the unexpected movement – then stiffen all over, suddenly unable to speak a word in his defense. 

He first presented the appearance of a sincerely frightened man, but now that Kakashi was really looking at Iruka, he was picking up other smaller and stranger signs...

The most obvious one was now pressed hard against Kakashi’s trouser-clad thigh. 

_Iruka was aroused._

Admittedly, Kakashi was truly relishing the feeling of restraining Iruka against a wall. If he was being real honest with himself, he was downright sadistic in his enjoyment of holding the man captive in an easy single-handed grip. He was never brutal with criminals as deputy sheriff, and he’d been ruthlessly efficient during the war. Even when Kakashi was an outlaw in a gang, he was more rapid-fire than a slow brutal tormentor. 

The few times that he had gotten to press men against walls – men that he liked, anyway – Kakashi had been paying them so he could fuck them.

Kakashi realized he was also aroused the very moment that Iruka looked back at him.

Iruka Umino was clearly no stranger to dangerous men, but he seemed terribly unsure of himself as he endured eye contact with Kakashi. He was surprisingly no longer interested in speaking. Iruka was still full body trembling against Kakashi, his muscular arms and wrists shuddering under Kakashi’s single hand. 

But he was staring at Kakashi with the weight of the world behind his gaze.

Looking back at him, Kakashi asked in a low, fascinated voice, “Are you shaking because you’re scared I’ll fuck you or because you want me to fuck you?”

An unreasonably pretty blush flew up to Iruka’s face. Keeping eye contact, Iruka swallowed roughly, his expression darkening in displeasure. “ _You_ want to fuck me,” he cuttingly announced. “Your dick is like a second pistol against my leg.” 

Kakashi was perversely intrigued: he found himself grinding against Iruka in silent response. As he closely observed Iruka’s expression, he was maliciously pleased to see Iruka’s blush deepen considerably. Under Kakashi’s insistent pressure, Iruka looked almost pained – in the way Kakashi had seen before on his lovers and men he paid for a good time. 

_He likes it. He wants more._

But Kakashi could feel sick worry sliding up his spine. 

_Iruka Umino is dangerous and not to be underestimated._

Iruka might seem genuinely aroused, but the man had also appeared truly drunk three days ago too. He had practically vomited on cue back in the street. Maybe Iruka could get hard the same false way, aiming to trick and dupe Kakashi however he could in the pursuit of killing him.

“Why do you want to kill me?” Kakashi asked suddenly, not acknowledging the conflicting signals he was sending Iruka _and himself_ as he continued to grind against the man at the same time.

Iruka looked sharply up at him, flushed in apparent arousal. He seemed truly bewildered by the question. He parted his lips to speak – but then fluttered his eyes shut as their pelvises met in just the right way. 

And then Iruka bit his bottom lip. 

Kakashi’s eyes trained on the sight, violent excitement coursing through him.

Knowing he sounded damnably strained, Kakashi persisted curiously, “Tell me.”

After hearing his demand, Iruka twisted in the hold, suddenly turning his hips against Kakashi’s in a truly sinful manner. Just like the man had done now too many times to count, Kakashi found himself caught off-guard by the pleasure that raced through him at the new delicious pressure on his cock. But he could tell that Iruka hadn’t really meant to cause such a reaction; the man was just irritated and frustrated and unable to move under Kakashi’s hold while being shoved flat against the wall.

Kakashi was wincing and gritting his teeth to keep himself from making a sound when Iruka answered him in a soft, distressed voice, “I – I just couldn’t believe it when I heard you were the deputy sheriff of Konoha.” 

When Iruka finally went still again, Kakashi managed to look properly at him and found the other man had closed his eyes, keeping his head away from the pistol that Kakashi was still pressing firmly against his throat. Sounding surprisingly weak and confused, Iruka tried to further explain, “I haven’t heard from Naruto in months – and I just… – you were his captain, you must have…”

Iruka flinched, jerking further away from the pistol. Filled with irritation, he suddenly demanded: “Can you please take that off my neck? I can barely think with you fucking me over my clothes.” A strange embarrassment overcame Kakashi, recognizing the undeniable accuracy of Iruka’s statement, but Iruka wasn’t finished berating him so quickly. Instead, Iruka also snapped out: “I can’t think at all with you doing that _and_ you readying to blow my brains out.”

Very reluctantly, Kakashi found himself backing off the other man. He didn’t relinquish his hold on Iruka’s wrists, but he pulled back his pistol, shamefully noting the gold-brown bruise he’d left on Iruka’s neck from the muzzle of the gun. He created distance between their groins, too, if only because he was beginning to recognize that _he’d_ also become distracted – which might actually get him killed.

Iruka looked immensely relieved to not be so overwhelmed. After a few moments, he stopped shaking so badly, and he worked his wrists to be more comfortable under Kakashi’s one-handed grip. Finally, Iruka gave Kakashi a critical, scolding stare before he remarked with prim distaste, “You’re a damn brute. You don’t have to be so rough…” 

But Iruka was unable to finish his reprimand, an embarrassed blush crossing over his scarred cheeks. The former teacher adjusted his hips in an attempt to hide his arousal, which Kakashi wasn’t about to let happen. He wasn’t about to take sole blame for their disheveled state. 

He found himself leaning back into Iruka, seeking the new bruise he’d given Iruka. Kakashi was truly pleased as Iruka’s breath hitched by his ear, surprised by their new intimate proximity with each other. 

Kakashi savored the sound of Iruka’s little half-restrained gasp as he ghosted his mouth over the bruise, making sure to give a slight but sincere brush of his tongue over Iruka’s injured skin. 

But, as Kakashi moved back some, he suddenly felt unable to look at Iruka. He said much more quietly than he intended, “I can be gentle when I want.” He blinked uneasily, staring at the dirt-covered wood-plank floor, wondering if he was losing his mind or his touch or both or more. 

He wondered just what Naruto had said to his former teacher: had the boy told Iruka about Kakashi’s ruthlessness in battle? How often Kakashi used his keen instincts – the ones that bordered on supernatural – to guess his opponents’ movements, counter them, even steal them? The same skills that had earned him the title of Copycat Killer and had let him win not a thousand duels, really, but definitely some number close to that?

Had Naruto written about how Kakashi preferred close combat over cavalry charges because he could see men better up close, being half-blind – but also because he didn’t think it the least bit honorable that warfare was turning into artillery shells and cannons blowing men to bits from hundreds of yards away?

Or the dozens of times that Kakashi had saved Naruto and that other boy, Sasuke? 

How he’d felt terrified for the first time in a long time when Naruto had run wildly after Sasuke when the other boy had suddenly deserted? He’d had to drag Naruto back across the field, the both of them stepping over _and on_ crying, bleeding, dying men. They weren’t halfway back when Kakashi had caught shrapnel in his left shoulder from an exploding shell, sending him stumbling, and he threw the boy ahead of him, trying to get him to safety. He must have passed out: sometime later Kakashi had looked up with blood in his eyes to see Naruto standing over him, looking both numb and furious. He had barely understood the boy as Naruto declared through gritted teeth, “I’m going to get him back,” and Kakashi went weak as a newborn kitten when Naruto hauled him up into both arms and carried him back to their infantry line like a bride. 

Kakashi stepped away from Iruka entirely, letting the WANTED gunslinger go loose. He wasn’t looking at the man, he found that he wasn’t able anymore. He holstered his pistol, knowing it was full-on stupid because Iruka was here to kill him. 

Well, maybe he should be killed. He hadn’t saved Naruto at all, not a single time, certainly not a dozen times, not in the long run at least. He’d just made life worse for the boy. He should have made him turn back, not let him join the service. Hell, Kakashi had himself been saved by the kid when he should have been left behind for dead. He _should_ be killed – not just because he was a legendary thief and murderer – but because he couldn’t stop the boy’s best friend from abandoning him. Kakashi couldn’t stop the government from using Naruto for their own ends. He didn’t have Naruto’s back when the fighting had stopped and the boy went crazy, searching for Sasuke in the ruined half the country.

Kakashi had just let him go. He had stood by, watching as war changed the boy – and then he’d fled when the fighting was over, too scared and scarred to stand beside him in peacetime.

He looked up in dead exhaustion as Iruka asked him suddenly, a dark incredulous fury in his voice, “What the hell are you doing? You know I’m here to kill you.” 

Kakashi watched as the other man clutched at his own holster, his right hand covering his pistol without taking it out. Iruka’s expression had returned to what Kakashi remembered from three days ago: he appeared near boiling with violence. His dark eyes were locked on Kakashi like he expected the very opposite of a miracle to occur without warning. Iruka’s free hand had drifted up to touch his throat where the new bruise was… but also where Kakashi had… where he had…

“You want to kill me because I ruined your kid,” Kakashi announced, absolutely empty of emotion. He leaned back into his old outlaw slouch, feeling boneless, his spirit gone and vanished. He imagined his scarred facial expression was unreadable and devoid of sentiment, but he also realized that his numbness was bordering on sorrow and that it might be bleeding into his appearance. He didn’t know.

Kakashi found he didn’t care what he looked like at all.

He gestured vaguely at himself with both hands, staring directly at Iruka, the once-good man who taught the very boy he’d seen destroyed in war. 

“Well,” Kakashi said emptily. “Go ahead and kill me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler: No character death next chapter. I wouldn't do that to y'all.
> 
> Instead we'll get to enjoy that Explicit rating, as well as those Switch Kakashi and Switch Iruka tags, in all their lovely glory...


	3. Chapter 3

Kakashi expected a moment’s hesitation then a well-aimed bullet to his heart, or maybe his head – he couldn’t quite tell if Iruka Umino was the sort of man to go poetic or turn executioner. He imagined he would know for only about a second before the sweet black blanket of death smothered the life out of him. He kept his hands away from his pistols to demonstrate that he really wasn’t playing, but, as more than a few moments passed without any new burn of pain, Kakashi found himself already sick of waiting. 

He looked impatiently at Iruka, who was staring at him with such wild disbelief that it was patently obvious the man wasn’t about to kill him anytime soon. 

But Iruka’s right hand remained on his pistol. He didn’t trust Kakashi, which was smart, because even if Kakashi was sincerely welcoming death’s embrace, that itself was a crazy fucking thing.

“I’m not going to kill an unarmed man,” Iruka finally proclaimed, real heat behind his words. He sounded like he’d eaten rotten meat and had just had to spit out squirming maggots. He looked disgusted, even insulted, that Kakashi was suggesting that he should do such a thing.

While Kakashi found himself the other man rather amusing, he was also becoming increasingly incensed.

“Why not?” he asked. He knew he would have shot Iruka already if the tables were turned. Kakashi _had_ shot men so stupid to offer themselves up to death: he didn’t think anyone who was so foolish to walk into an ambush deserved to walk out unscathed. 

But Iruka clearly wasn’t having it. The scarred former schoolteacher showed some of his old self as he sputtered, shaking his head, “It’s not… it’s not _honorable_!”

Kakashi blinked both eyes in surprise before he felt a twisted smile come over him. He tilted his head to the side, glancing Iruka up and down, trying to remember the WANTED description’s dire warning, as he skeptically contemplated aloud, “Just what sort of gunslinger are you?”

Iruka looked even _more_ insulted by that question. He stood straighter, his shaking stopped. A dark scowl tore across his face. He began with bright blazing pride, “I’m –” but then cut himself off, apparently changing his mind all of a sudden. After a second’s pause, Iruka concluded in a lower, rougher voice while staring straight at Kakashi, “I don’t have a choice. Someone needs to make sure justice gets done.”

Ah, another little piece to the puzzle. Kakashi felt his eyes narrow in morbid interest on the other man. He drawled, slow and deadly intrigued, “So… you kill fugitives, do you?” His judgement was rewarded when Iruka jerkily stiffened and then glowered at him, looking like a tired soldier told to stand at attention by a furious superior officer. 

Even though Kakashi still felt very ready to suffocate on the dark fabric of death’s robes, he did admittedly feel a bit interested in the idea of a teacher gone vigilante lawman. It wasn’t too far off from what he’d heard Naruto had been doing over the past two years. The boy still sought out Sasuke at every backwater creek and mosquito-infested swamp and burnt field across the defeated section of the country, but Naruto had also done a lot of good by tracking down renegade murderers and taking them out. 

Still, he hadn’t shifted out of war: Naruto didn’t bring men to jail or prison. He shot them dead, and then he moved on, eternally seeking out his damned so-called best friend.

Much further west, Naruto’s old teacher was apparently doing much the same. That would make sense: Iruka had only and finally made the national WANTED lists because of his erratic duel in Suna against the other WANTED gunslinger, who he shot and killed so publicly. 

It wasn’t hard to find the WANTED lists as a civilian, plus the worst criminals had their faces plastered on public posters, so Iruka could track down whoever he… wanted.

For whatever reason Iruka had taken it upon himself to do extralegal justice. 

Obviously displeased with Kakashi’s intrigued but condescending expression, Iruka dropped his left hand from his throat to his pocket, where Kakashi realized he must be keeping other knives beyond the pocket-knife on the floor. But then Iruka snapped at him, sounding nasty and peeved, “Don’t act like you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Kakashi instantly retorted, his own tone light and airy, “Oh, I’ve done terrible things, that’s true.” He looked, languid and contemplative, over the other man, warmly recalling how Iruka’s body had felt against his own while pinned against the wall. Something his stare must have startled Iruka, because the vigilante ex-teacher flushed just a little, and Kakashi wondered with distracted curiosity, “So I don’t understand why you’re not shooting me.”

Iruka scowled and gestured with his left hand at Kakashi. He’d been fidgeting with a knife in his pocket, which he now brought out. The unsheathed six-inch blade was held easy between his calloused fingers. Iruka seemed utterly unbothered by the weapon, but Kakashi felt a small, historic twinge of discomfort. His scarred left eye twitched minutely, but Iruka didn’t notice it. Instead, the other man accused him, exasperated, “Because _this_ isn’t right. You’re just –” Iruka looked at Kakashi incredulously before he dramatically cut through the air with his knife. “You’re just giving up!”

Kakashi swallowed roughly out of his control. He hadn’t considered Iruka stabbing him to death, but that was an actual possibility, wasn’t it? He tried not to stare at the knife that Iruka was holding so comfortably and asked in a slow, drawn-out way, “You want me to fight back?”

Iruka bit back at him right away, “I don’t want you to pity yourself.” He looked supremely pissed and disappointed, which Kakashi truthfully found beyond strange. 

Iruka wasn’t having any of Kakashi’s ‘give myself up unto God’ ‘walk straight into the fires of hell’ ‘I deserve this, take me now Lord’ sacrifice-suicide… and that entertained him in ways he’d never imagined possible.

Kakashi also found himself chewing over his feelings on Iruka’s unusual honor code. 

“Oh, no?” he asked, wry and bitter. He saw some older version of himself, with the black eyepatch and dark bandana, clutching the side of a runaway coal-spewing train, lining up a perfect shot on a distant sheriff chasing after him – and he wondered if Iruka would be shooting him quicker if he told him that he hadn’t just taken the shot, but he’d _relished_ taking the shot. 

He’d _loved_ seeing the man’s body jerk, collapse off his horse.

Fuck, he’d jumped off the train and stolen the horse, too, hadn’t he?

The memory unexpectedly sobered Kakashi. Good Christ, he needed to die. That was a shit thing to do to a man who probably had a wife and babies back home. And Kakashi couldn’t even remember what happened to the horse. He certainly didn’t have it now. That meant it – _was it a she? just what color was she?_ – was dead and gone, too, in no better a state than her former owner.

Iruka must have noticed the darker, somber look that cascaded over Kakashi’s features, because even though he’d been defensive a moment earlier, he now took up a real furious stance. He pointed his knife right at Kakashi – _hell, right at his eye, it seemed_ – and declared in what had to be a teacher voice, not that Kakashi would know, having never gone to school himself, “No, there’s nothing pitiable about you. You survived a war that killed so many men that they’re still finding bodies down wells and in cotton fields two years later.”

Kakashi looked sharply at Iruka: for a second there, it sounded like maybe the man _had_ been in the war. Something about his tone had shifted, as if _he himself_ had pulled out decomposing corpses from ditches. But Iruka wasn’t letting him give it too much thought, because he continued, back to gesturing theatrically at Kakashi with the knife, “You’ve got all your limbs, your pretty face is intact, you’re just as quick as you were six years ago, you got the jump on me because you broke through a window on the second story in the dead of night.”

Iruka sniffed, turning his head up and looking down at Kakashi. “You’re not pitiful.” He concluded in a harsh manner that Kakashi assumed was that of a pissed off, dissatisfied school-teacher, “You just need to get your shit together.”

Even though he was certainly oddly inspired by Iruka’s monologue, Kakashi found himself giving the other man a wide smile. “Did you just say that I have a pretty face?”

But he was surprised when Iruka only rolled his eyes at him. “Fine, I meant to say handsome, does that make you feel better?” Iruka shot him a dangerous look of pure exasperation and distaste. “Now stop sulking. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Alright,” Kakashi decided abruptly. Both his hands dropped right down to his pistols, and he felt the ugly cold of his past retreat, being replaced with the solid steel intensity of his new role as deputy sheriff. He could feel his bones answering the call: he pulled himself out of his slouch, and he angled his body more appropriately to start _and end_ any necessary fight between them. 

Iruka watched him quite blankly, shifting his gaze from Kakashi’s hands atop his pistols then back up to Kakashi’s mismatched eyes. He finally tensed all over when Kakashi announced, resolved and unyielding, staring right back at him, “I’m taking you to jail.”

Closing his hand around his holstered pistol, Iruka replied straightaway with a frightfully simple single word: 

“No.”

Kakashi didn’t move any further. He had locked onto Iruka, now and forever. “If you’re not going to kill me,” Kakashi explained, sounding as fatal and certain a man hanging dead on the gallows hours after his execution, “then I’m taking you to jail. That’s the only other option.”

Their gazes were locked on each other. Iruka seemed to have immediately overcome his disbelief in Kakashi’s sudden, dizzying shift back to deputy sheriff. In parallel, somehow, he had done much the same: Iruka gathered back that fearsome intensity of his vigilante WANTED self in both expression and stance. He hadn’t pulled out his pistol, because he must have understood that if he did, then Kakashi would shoot him immediately. 

And he was right. Kakashi wasn’t going to take that risk: he wasn’t going to embrace death with open arms, not now, not today, anyway.

Yet Iruka still held the knife in his left hand with clear, indisputable promise. 

Kakashi certainly recognized the promise. Scarlet-red blood was still leaking out his stomach wound from where Iruka had needled him with the pocket-knife only minutes earlier.

Iruka’s dark brown eyes narrowed on him, sizing him up. His scarred face slowly scrunched in visible refusal of Kakashi’s proposition. Iruka’s shoulders bunched at the same time as he finally ground out, “I’m not going to prison.”

It was all so ridiculous and insane and rapid-fire, but Kakashi could still see it happening just slowly enough that he found himself trying to warn the other man _not to do it_ – 

“Iruka, don’t –”

But the WANTED vigilante wasn’t listening.

Instead he hauled ass out of the bedroom.

Kakashi followed rapidly, his boots slipping on the broken glass. He swung himself out of the Hiruzen’s bedroom door, knowing from his last visit that the staircase was immediately to the right. He just caught a glimpse of Iruka jumping over the railing, landing on the ground floor, and disappearing from sight, obviously heading towards the kitchen and the back door. Cursing loudly to himself, Kakashi replicated the same move with deadly accuracy: he felt more of the impact of the jump than he would have six years ago, but he kept moving, because Iruka sure as shit was not slowing down.

In contrast, Kakashi realized instantaneously that the other man was already out of the house by the time that he’d stumbled his way into the kitchen. The old wood back door was wide open, and Kakashi flung himself outside, his mutilated gaze darting every which way. He forced his bad left eye closed to get a better picture in the dark where Iruka might have gone – which finally worked – because he saw a figure in a familiar pale striped shirt running off towards the dead vegetable garden behind Hiruzen’s main house.

He wasn’t going to lose Iruka again. Kakashi gathered every last ounce of energy in his body and bones, thinking of the grotesque hellscape of the battlefield, where each and every movement counted, and he rushed after Iruka with the worst sort of intent. He would shoot the man – he would kill him – he would –

The spectral sound of Iruka’s lusty breath in his ear shocked him. Kakashi nearly tripped in surprise: it had seemed so real that he almost looked behind him to see how Iruka had gotten there. 

But, no, it was like a warning from his past and one from his grave – don’t kill Iruka.

He slammed his pistols back in their holsters. Finally catching up with Iruka, who really _was_ moving impressively fast, Kakashi decided to tackle him instead. He did with little grace and far too much strength behind the attack, sending both of them crashing hard into the dust. 

Iruka was instantly resisting, smashing Kakashi directly in the same spot that he’d cracked the pistol three days earlier. It took no genius at all to tell that the scabbed wound burst open, hot blood rolling right down Kakashi’s scarred cheek. He himself made no sound as he wrestled Iruka down flat on the ground. His attention was flying about like wild birds scared by the scream of an arriving train: Kakashi couldn’t fully trust his eyes, but he kept looking at his own pistols, Iruka’s pistol, Iruka’s hands, Iruka’s face. He was bleeding from two wounds, and Iruka none, and the stakes were unexpectedly stacked against him.

But Kakashi could feel the tide turning his favor. Iruka wasn’t growing afraid of him again, but he was aggravated, and it was making him sloppy. The teacher-gunslinger was hard to pin down, but Kakashi finally controlled him, forcing Iruka’s legs down using his own calves and ankles while he enclosed his hands over Iruka’s wrists once more. He wasn’t too proud to use his weight to keep the other man down on the dirt. Kakashi saw the very moment that the fight left Iruka, and he was suddenly all too happy that he’d wrestled Gai during his bandit years. 

Kakashi was finally getting his wits back together as he stared down at Iruka. The other man looked unreservedly furious. Iruka had sustained some sort of injury to his cheek in the skirmish, a slight bruise of a thing that neared his horizontal facial scar. He was spitting mad, too. Although he was no longer trying to punch Kakashi in the face, he was red-faced and restless underneath him, twisting and turning his body, working to get out from under him.

They made eye contact after a frantic moment. Iruka’s dark eyes narrowed immediately. His mouth drew up into a real animalistic snarl, almost as if he was warning Kakashi not to get any closer, which wasn’t much of a possibility in their already too-intimate position. Iruka pushed his head back further into the dirt, staying as far from Kakashi’s face as possible. 

It was about then that Kakashi realized that Iruka’s hair had gotten real loose in their struggle, to the point that his shoulder-length locks had fallen free of whatever he was using to tie it up. 

Still fully restraining Iruka and straddling him, Kakashi stilled as he better looked down at the other man.

Iruka was sweetly flushed… much like a man during sex. His dark eyes burned with fury but also passion, the kind that lit crackling fires in the depths of Kakashi’s cold soul. His shirt was undone some, showing that thick tan muscle that had felt so good against Kakashi’s body when he’d pinned Iruka to the wall – and when Iruka had forced _him_ against the building in the alleyway. Iruka was breathing heavily, dark brown hair swept about in his face. Shifting his body in untiring defiance to being restrained, Iruka’s eyes fixed upwards on Kakashi. 

_Shit, he looks enticing._

… oh God… that was it. 

_That’s_ why Kakashi hadn’t killed Iruka six years ago.

Kakashi had seen Iruka this painfully tempting before…

Six years ago at the bank. 

A moment after he’d gotten clocked in the eye, he had knocked Iruka out, sending him sprawling on the white-grey marble floor of Academy bank. Both his ego and face bruised, Kakashi had leveled his pistol at the once feisty but now totally unconscious stranger. As his vision settled and he got his balance back, Kakashi finally took a moment to get a better look at the other man, intending on shooting him dead a second later.

But, by God in Heaven, the man was _pretty_. 

He was the sort of thing that Kakashi had been looking desperately for in bars and brothels his whole life and had never, ever found. He’d been haunted by the idea of such a face all his life: scarred, dark-featured, masculine but just… just so remarkably pretty, too. Even the man’s hair had spread out in an unbelievable sweet angelic halo around his head, leaving Kakashi feeling so suddenly like an atrocious fiend that he immediately backed away from the unconscious stranger. Then he had heard Gai shouting something at him, and Kakashi had turned tail and ran away.

He was utterly unable to kill a man so magnificent.

Staring down at Iruka again, six years later, Kakashi felt his expression going out of his control. He was suddenly flustered; embarrassment about his past self and his reignited feelings was turning his whole body hot and confused. He realized all too absurdly and obscenely that he was now straddling the very man that he’d once considered an angel – after he had knocked him unconscious. 

If he stood up to get away from Iruka, he was almost certain that the other man _would_ actually kill him this time. Kakashi had already given the ultimatum, there was no going back. Undoubtedly Iruka didn’t want to go to prison, and the only other option was for one of them to drop dead in the dust. 

And now Kakashi was realizing that he’d be the dead man of their duo. He couldn’t kill Iruka, he _wouldn’t_ kill him. Not just because he was Naruto’s old teacher, but because –

Well, because –

He abruptly noticed that Iruka was staring up at him with a strange expression across his scarred facial features. 

Kakashi blinked owlishly down at him. He wasn’t sure what to say. He knew so very terribly that he was blushing all over. With his bandana gone, he knew the sight meant too-rosy cheeks on bright white skin. He lessened his grip on instinct, bringing his fingers just slightly off Iruka’s wrists. He shifted backwards, too, almost desperate to get away from Iruka but knowing that couldn’t let the other man go for fear of death.

As he did, Kakashi realized two things at once: firstly, Iruka was greatly aroused, his cock wickedly pronounced his loose trousers, and secondly, Kakashi had just pushed backwards on Iruka’s erection and the hard length was now pressed against his ass. 

Kakashi flushed even more. He hadn’t felt another man behind him in some time: he hadn’t slept with anyone his entire time as deputy sheriff for fear being caught and identified in some way. During the war, he’d managed to sleep with a few men and several women, but those had been shadowy, sick, despairing attempts to retain sanity and humanity. 

The last time someone had taken him… was about six years ago. He couldn’t remember a thing about the other man, just the feel of huge masculine hands holding him down, thick fingers on his hips, a hard cock thrusting in and out of him with no remorse, just unflinching carnal desire.

Kakashi tilted his head upwards towards the pale moon, trying to avoid looking at Iruka, but also because he found that he really, truly missed the sensation. He loved the feel of Iruka’s hard cock persistent and merciless against his backside. He wanted it suddenly with every dumb speck of his soul still struggling to survive existence. He wanted to get fucked by the other man so desperately, he could feel his body shivering in want, and both his hands shook over Iruka’s wrists as he tried to contain himself.

He began moving back against Iruka’s arousal without thinking. Kakashi realized he was breathing harshly through slightly parted lips, and his eyes slid closed. He didn’t feel enough shame to stop himself from grinding down against the other man. Instead, he found himself rolling his hips just slightly, pushing his own pained cock down against Iruka’s taut abdomen. The feeling was so terrifically good that, before he could stop himself, Kakashi exhaled unsteadily, arching his back, and tightened his grip on both of Iruka’s wrists.

“Kakashi.”

He stopped himself from startling, having never heard Iruka say his real name, but Kakashi was still unsteady and surprised as he looked back down at the man underneath him. 

Iruka was much more flushed than before: his expression had gone soft in some ways but harder in others. His gaze was dangerous and obsessive, fixed darkly upwards on the man above him. Kakashi felt like a skittish rabbit suddenly realizing that he was being stalked by wolves. He stayed as still as he could, but his hips moved out of his control, pushing down against Iruka, on the same lust-filled impulse that had overtaken him the last few seconds. 

He was nicely rewarded by a desperate flutter of Iruka’s dark eyes. Kakashi’s heart pounded against his ribcage like a prisoner slamming the old metal bars of a jail cell.

“I’ll go with you,” Iruka suddenly breathed. He opened his eyes again, looking deeply into Kakashi’s own mismatched eyes. He flexed his arms under Kakashi’s hold and swallowed down what seemed to be a mass of pain and confusion. “You can take me to jail.” 

Iruka’s chest was heaving as he worked to breathe properly. For the first time, Kakashi recognized that Iruka had been pushing up his own hips, thrusting into Kakashi as best he could while being restrained. The realization filled him with heat and embarrassment and excitement, but he felt a truly impossible burn race through his veins as Iruka said in a voice both desperate and damned, “But let me have the night with you. Let me be with you.”

Kakashi stared down at Iruka.

Again – _again!_ \- he felt as if he was the one trapped, not Iruka.

He narrowed his eyes on the other man. “You’re going to try to kill me,” Kakashi accused, and he felt faintly pleased that he didn’t sound the same breathy mess that Iruka did. He instead went logical and cold in ways that he didn’t expect: he wasn’t opposed to a night with Iruka, not at all, but he knew that the former teacher was just that, _a former teacher_. 

Iruka Umino was WANTED. He was a gunslinger, a vigilante, a sheriff murderer. 

He had never said he wouldn’t murder Kakashi – just that he wouldn’t kill him if Kakashi was going to give up and act a pitiful man seeking out death in some stupid stumbling fashion.

Still looking up at Kakashi, not breaking his gaze away, Iruka promised fiercely, “No, I won’t.”

Kakashi found himself digging his fingernails into Iruka’s wrists. He was glaring down at the other man, his expression going dark and threatening. He wasn’t going to die here in Hiruzen’s abandoned homestead, not by this man, not by any man. He’d _just_ decided he wasn’t going to die, but he meant it. He knew Iruka’s promise was as meaningless as the sweet words of a red-lipped prostitute swinging her hips and trying to draw a man up to a hotel room.

“Swear on Naruto’s life,” Kakashi demanded. He knew he shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea of them being together, but… he could still feel Iruka, hard as a rock, pressed against his ass.

It made him so dumb and drunk that he would have thought that he’d been drinking whiskey all day and all night, never stopping a single second to breathe.

Iruka looked stunned hearing Kakashi’s command. But his scarred cheeks stayed just as flushed. His eyes were searching Kakashi’s expression; he was wondering things, too, if they should do this, if he wasn’t making a huge mistake. Nonetheless, Iruka slowly began to nod before he mustered out, at first weakly – clearly disliking using his old student in such a way – but then continuing with real renewed vigor: “I swear on Naruto’s life… I won’t try to kill you.”

Several long seconds slowly passed.

But then –

“Alright,” Kakashi said finally. He released Iruka’s wrists and stood in one graceful motion. He stepped aside, brushing back his wild silver hair from his face. He glanced up towards the moon for a moment, wondering if this would be his last night alive after all, before he turned his attention back down to Iruka, who he realized hadn’t moved since he’d stopped restraining him.

Some weird twisted sense of chivalry overcame him. Kakashi extended his hand down to the other man, and he felt himself smiling a bit smugly as Iruka carefully took his hand. He hoisted the WANTED gunslinger back to his feet, and then the two of them stared at each other in a lingering moment of foreshadowing and want. 

Eventually Kakashi shrugged, slipping his hands back into the pockets of his sheriff jacket. He glanced down at the silver star on his chest, finding himself unable to look at Iruka, and said as calmly as he could, “I’ve got to get my horse. She’s tied up to a fence a bit away from here.”

Iruka audibly shifted his stance in response. He sounded flustered and unsure as he replied, “Okay. Let’s… let’s go find her.”

Kakashi started walking without commenting further. He found Iruka soon matching his pace, keeping up beside him. They weren’t looking at each other – or, rather, Kakashi wasn’t looking at Iruka. He was wondering just what the hell he was doing. Was he really agreeing to one night with a WANTED outlaw only to get the man to jail? Or was he just desperate to get fucked? Or was this because of the resurfacing of the old memory of Iruka in the bank? Or was this what Naruto had said, wearing a blood-stained blue uniform, sniffling and staring into the campfire, about how Iruka was kind and good to him when no one else was?

Was this because Iruka hadn’t killed him when he asked him to? 

Was this – was this because Kakashi wanted to get fucked by an honorable man?

Well, Iruka wasn’t so honorable, really. He’d killed another man within the week. He acted, too, as if he had killed other men before the public affair in Suna. Iruka clearly felt no remorse over his deadly actions. Kakashi wasn’t sure if that was due to honor, or justice, or something else. He didn’t understand why Iruka felt so possessed to kill fugitives fleeing the law. He could get why Iruka wanted to kill _him_ after all the things that he had done to Iruka – but what about the others?

Kakashi found his horse where he had left her. She was a bit tense initially seeing him and Iruka, having obviously not been pleased to be left alone in the night. But Kakashi ran a reassuring hand over her neck, whispered a few empty things into her dark mane, and then looked back towards Iruka. The other man was standing still, watching him, and looked surprised when Kakashi suddenly told him, “You get on first.”

Even though it looked like Iruka wanted to ask the stupid question “Me?” the man only nodded and stepped closer to Kakashi. He brought himself onto the horse’s back with the ridiculous sort of ease of a man long familiar with riding bareback. Kakashi had purposefully not put his sheriff’s saddle on his steed, knowing too well that she could be stolen. He wasn’t about to lose company property in his pursuit of Iruka. Now that he was back with his horse and had Iruka with him, Kakashi felt slightly relieved that he _hadn’t_ brought the saddle. It would be much easier to ride behind Iruka without the jumbling of one of them being in the saddle and the other not. 

Instead, Kakashi dragged himself up on his sheriff-appointed steed, right behind Iruka. He immediately took the reins from the other man and settled in closer to him, urging the horse onwards with a well-trained nudge from his boots. She was a good animal, and Kakashi liked her: she seemed unbothered by the additional weight and took the silent directions as serenely as an obedient subordinate told to shoot the enemy. He reached forward out of instinct, aiming to pat her neck, when he realized that he had fully pressed himself against Iruka with the motion.

Their sudden proximity shook Kakashi out of his philosophical stupor. He realized his face was by Iruka’s long tan neck, just barely covered by his dark hair. Kakashi turned a little to see the smooth brown skin up close. He closed the distance without thinking, his lips finding the junction between Iruka’s shoulder and neck. He kissed there softly, drawing out his tongue only a moment later. Nudging aside the man’s hair, Kakashi found himself licking the length of Iruka’s lean neck all the way up to the man’s ear, which he kissed with gentle force.

Then he bit down on Iruka’s earlobe, enjoying the feel of it between his teeth.

He really woke up out of his daze when Iruka leaned backwards into him and reached over to grab his trouser-clad thigh. His fingers were shaking as he roughly dug into Kakashi’s leg.

Kakashi finally returned to his usual state of alertness – when Iruka turned slightly and gave him an impossibly hot stare over his shoulder. 

He blinked… but then smiled slowly back at Iruka. 

Kakashi did the very threatening but alluring thing of kissing through Iruka’s hair on the very top of his spine above his collar. He murmured, deliberately loud enough for Iruka to hear, “I expect you to be nice to me, Professor.” 

Then he partially dropped the reins and brought his hand over Iruka’s shirt, pushing aside his suspenders to drag sharp fingernails over Iruka’s nipple with deadly accuracy and cruelty. Although he was audibly trying to stop himself from making a sound, Iruka couldn’t entirely stifle his gasp or hold his body back from shuddering against Kakashi’s. 

As Iruka turned his head back to face forward, his face flushing wildly, Kakashi whispered lewdly, licking the curve of Iruka’s ear, “I’m a virgin, don’t you know?”

“You’re obviously not, you asshole,” Iruka replied immediately, sounding quite offended. He shook his head, which caused Kakashi to back away to avoid getting a mouth-full of hair. Before he could even begin to worry that he’d actually bothered the man more than was necessary, Iruka moved backwards and pushed against Kakashi’s groin in a ludicrously indecent way that had Kakashi instantly dropping his head on Iruka’s shoulder in a pained gasp. 

“I don’t even want to know how many people you’ve fucked,” Iruka declared hotly. He actually _did_ sound insulted now, but Kakashi could hear uncertainty and embarrassment, too. So Kakashi dropped his hand even further, spreading his fingers across Iruka’s clothed thigh by what Kakashi imagined was still a thrilled erection persisting even with Iruka’s unspoken worries of comparison between their two sexual histories.

“Oh, but Iruka,” Kakashi said silkily, kissing through the other man’s loose hair to the slope of his neck. “I want _you_ to fuck _me_.” He relished how Iruka’s whole body stiffened, like a young soldier shouted at to straighten up in early morning formation, and he laughed under his breath. “You thought I wanted to fuck you, hm?” Kakashi mused aloud. He could feel obscene heat radiating from Iruka like the sun had forced its way out at midnight. The man had obviously moved past embarrassment and was now into the wonderful tense throes of want.

He moved his hand and found what he wanted: Iruka was still hard, his cock trapped in his trousers. Kakashi found himself grinning as he gave the man’s arousal a firm but skilled stroke. Iruka shuddered against him and almost thrust up into his hand before he caught himself. 

Kakashi spoke with ruthless clarity as he amended his comment, “I want that, too. But you’re going to fuck me first.” He ran his fingers lightly over the throbbing bulge in Iruka’s pants, making the other man twist his hips in lust-filled tension. Kakashi felt very little remorse as he moved his hand rapidly, forcing Iruka backwards so they were totally flush together. 

He enjoyed the surprised gasp that Iruka couldn’t hold back. 

And he swam in sadistic bliss as Iruka shivered full-body against him when Kakashi brutally vowed, “You’re going to be screaming my name all night long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't wait to add all sorts of tags for the next chapter...


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters get longer each time, but hell, it's just too fun writing them.
> 
> Please enjoy, dearest reader. 
> 
>  
> 
> ____

Kakashi dismounted his horse first, playing the gentleman by helping Iruka find his footing on the ground outside Hiruzen’s homestead. Regretting that the barn was nothing but ash, he had to rely on the hope that his horse wouldn’t be targeted if tied up behind the main house. She seemed a little nervous at being left alone again, so Kakashi petted her and made a few promises of sugar cubes into her mane. 

Then he mockingly gestured with a sweep of his arm for Iruka to go back inside the house.

The other man looked a bit sourly at him, clearly displeased at the faux show of chivalry, but he went in regardless. Kakashi silently followed Iruka up the same stairs that they had jumped down earlier in the night, relieved not to be rushing this time. His semi-broken gaze searched Iruka’s frame as they both made their way back upstairs: the former teacher was visibly well-muscled and moved well, even after their dirty fighting. He had some subtle grace to his bones, though not nearly as much as Kakashi. Having been tackled to the ground without a coat, dry orange-tan dirt had thoroughly ruined Iruka’s pale shirt. His shoulder-length dark brown hair was loose and dirty, too, but Kakashi still found it as strikingly pretty as he had six years ago. 

He wondered slightly about his own hair – were his silver locks still holding their shape? 

… did Iruka like his hair? 

Iruka turned away from Hiruzen’s bedroom and went further down the hallway, cutting into the furthest room on the second story. While he didn’t understand why they weren’t returning to the main bedroom, Kakashi went after him obediently. He imagined that the mysterious change had something to do with Iruka’s decision to visit this specific homestead in the first place. 

Ever since their encounter had escalated when he was stabbed, Kakashi had thought about why Iruka had appeared at _this_ house – and why he felt comfortable enough to take off his coat and hat – … and hadn’t he been holding a letter earlier?

When Kakashi stepped into the other room, he quickly understood it to be spare sleeping quarters. There was an old narrow bed on the back left of the room. A tall bureau stood against the wall in front of the door. In the back right corner sat a rather decent desk with a small collection of books, most miniature in size, easily put into saddlebags, perfectly lined up with their titles facing outwards. With his messed-up gaze, Kakashi couldn’t make out most of the tiny gold-embossed words, but he just managed to spot the familiar swirl of the name _Shakespeare_ on the nearest book.

A short nightstand rested beside the bed, an unlit gas lamp sitting atop the wood. 

It was the light that had spawned rumors and had attracted Kakashi like a moth to a flame.

Iruka was standing still in the dead center of the room, watching Kakashi as he assessed the space. Two rather tall glass windows shed light into the corner bedroom: one on the wall between the bed and desk, and the other on the other wall between the desk and bureau. The soft white moonlight floating into the bedroom caused Iruka to look supernatural, even spectral, his angelic appearance fading away. He seemed to have emerged straight out of Kakashi’s past, some ghostly reminder of his outlaw days coalesced into a solitary man.

He was from a distant dreamlike time before Kakashi helped strangers win a war through mass murder, before he’d sweet-talked his way into wearing a silver badge.

But something else haunted him about the whole thing, gnawing at him, eating away his insides. He would have a real truthful answer before going further with the other man. He badly needed to know more about the man he was going to show the most sinful and weakest parts of himself. 

Keeping up his relaxed slouch, he stared into Iruka’s dark eyes and guessed with untrue confidence, “You know this house.”

Looking right back at him, Iruka replied simply, his own stance loose and unworried, “I spent summers with Mr. Sarutobi when I was younger.”

Kakashi felt that slick bit of fear slide up his throat, just like when he’d pinned Iruka against the wall, felt him get aroused, and wondered if it was true or false or something in-between. He had to force his panic down and into the abyss so he could remark in a level, unthreatening tone, “You’re from Konoha.”

Iruka impressed the living hell out of him by not reacting at all. His gaze didn’t falter; he looked just as serene as a numbed-out soldier freezing to death in a snowstorm. He was cold and dead on the issue, and he clearly wanted Kakashi to drop it, but Kakashi kept staring at him, willing himself to be patient and not give into the impulse to act immediately in writhing irritation. 

Still staring at Kakashi, Iruka’s answer came out short, sharp: “Yes.” 

No matter Iruka’s frustration with him, Kakashi wasn’t going to let the conversation end there. He had speculated that Iruka knew the house, the town, the area too well for a passing stranger, but to hear it admitted aloud was something else. He himself was new to Konoha after the war; he’d appeared in the frontier town during those first few days of turmoil when the country was still studying its recently sewn-shut wounds. He hadn’t heard anyone mention Naruto in Konoha, nothing familiar anyway, so he’d simply thought the boy was born elsewhere, just like him.

But if Iruka was here – then did that mean Naruto had lived in Konoha, too? Long ago, before the war?

Kakashi kept his hands in his sheriff jacket, but he tilted his head to the side, letting his white-silver hair spread to the side. He eyed Iruka skeptically and drawled out, “So why doesn’t anyone recognize you?”

Iruka surprised him by giving a condescending smirk. He shrugged his dirt-stained shoulders and stepped towards Kakashi, confiding in an easy flowing voice, “People see what they want to see.” After he stopped directly in front of Kakashi – who felt very much on edge, even knowing Iruka’s promise that he wouldn’t try to kill him – Iruka waved one calloused hand in the air between them. “No one wants their sheriff to be an outlaw, and no one expects their teachers to fall from grace.” 

Abruptly, Iruka seemed to slip forward, smashing into him full-force – but then Kakashi grabbed him under the armpits, instinctively hoisting him off the ground, catching him before he truly collapsed. In the blink of an eye, the other man had gone dead weight and nearly boneless, just as he had at Ichiraku’s three days ago. 

Kakashi found he was blinking both eyes in deep damnable shock as Iruka rolled back his head off Kakashi’s sheriff jacket and delivered up a dramatic wink. But his mouth didn’t match his dark eyes. While Iruka was smiling at him, mean and cruel, his eyes were flat and glossy. 

“What’s a better disguise to wear than a drunkard?” Iruka proposed as he slunk down a little further against Kakashi’s stiff conflicted body, soundlessly suggesting Kakashi either drop him or yank him up further. Without even realizing he’d made a choice, Kakashi pulled the other man to his feet. His head was spinning at the extent of Iruka’s theatrical expertise; he thought he’d been an actor all his life, but he’d never met anyone with the chilling understanding of human nature as Iruka. Maybe it had come from the man’s time as a teacher? Something from his childhood? His time with Naruto? 

_Just what had Iruka done during the war? What had he done these last two years?_

Although clearly amused with Kakashi’s reaction to him – _again_ , Iruka had thought it was funny when Kakashi had helped him at the bar, too! shit! Jesus! – Iruka pushed off of him with a bit more force than necessary. Turning around to face the window by the bureau, Iruka declared in a surprisingly sorry tone: “It’s the disguise of a lonely despicable man.” Kakashi couldn’t see Iruka’s expression, and he badly wanted to, as he heard Iruka conclude quietly, “I’ve had a lot of practice with the role.” 

Kakashi found himself instinctively closing the distance between them again. He was troubled by Iruka’s acting abilities – and the man’s mysterious past – but he wanted his hands back on Iruka. He felt like he better understood the former teacher turned WANTED gunslinger when they were in close physical contact, and he needed that now once again. For just one night, he didn’t want to feel as unsettled as he did every single day of his life: tonight his greedy self was desperate for stability, something firm and strong under his scarred fingers.

He slid his lean hand over Iruka’s dirt-stained shoulder, turning him back towards the door. Knowing he was staring hard at the other man but finding he just didn’t care, Kakashi asked, dark, low, and curious, “Who do you want me to be?” He could actually see his reflection in Iruka’s wide black eyes: he was his own ghost in his near-white sheriff jacket with silver hair. His scarred red eye was surreal staring back at him in miniature. He could see himself leaning down towards Iruka, nearing the man’s face with deadly slow precision. 

Iruka’s eyes stayed perfectly on him; he remained unmoving. But Kakashi could easily sense that the other man’s sudden surprise at being confronted with the _very_ physical terms of their truce. He maliciously enjoyed such obvious apprehension after Iruka’s slick performance with him a minute earlier. He decided he wouldn’t be taken by the other man, not without a fight, not in death and not in the bedroom, either.

Kakashi didn’t hide the sinister pleasure in his voice as he pondered aloud, holding himself from the final few inches that would have allowed them to finally kiss… 

“Do you want the outlaw... or the captain… or the sheriff?”

After a second, Iruka visibly swallowed down his discomfort. With far too much finesse for a former teacher, he endured the pure evil that Kakashi knew he was emanating from his frame. Instead of balking and stepping away like an ordinary man, Iruka reached up and cupped Kakashi's scarred cheek in one rough calloused hand, startling Kakashi’s self-assurance right out of him. His dark eyes revealed Kakashi’s own surprise at the intimate touch, but Iruka himself sounded cool and unshaken as he wondered curiously, “Can’t I have all of you?”

Kakashi knew a blush had fought its way onto his face: it felt like wildfire had burst up through his shirt, vest, jacket and was abruptly replacing his blue silk tie, choking the life out of him with hot flame. He felt truly dangerous as if he were in the heated peak of battle – but he also felt so very much like he was a whore in a hotel room – and it was all so terribly mystifying and arousing. He worked to steady himself and lowered his broken gaze to Iruka’s lips before returning to meet Iruka’s far-too-fascinated eyes.

At the nearly the same time, Iruka’s fingers traced down Kakashi’s long facial scar like they had been lovers for decades.

Kakashi found himself utterly terrified by the too intimate touch – something he didn’t dare show the other man, unwilling to reveal any bit of weakness. 

But, honestly, he couldn’t recall the last time someone had touched his face so kindly… let alone caressed down the entirety of his scar with such blatant adoration…

Iruka had just done it without a shred of remorse or a care in the world. 

He only realized that he was breathing hard when Iruka’s hand brushed backwards to thread tightly through Kakashi’s white-silver hair. He expected the man to kiss him, but instead Iruka dropped his hands to each of Kakashi’s shoulders and slipped off his sheriff’s jacket as if he had considerable practice disrobing other officers of the law. Kakashi kept still, realizing suddenly that this was it, that this was happening _now_ between them. He was giving up his body so he could turn Iruka over to federal forces – to keep him alive for Naruto’s sake – the man who had dueled a WANTED gunslinger in a public street a week earlier – who had murdered and shot men wearing the same silver star as –

The same silver star now lying face-down on the wood floor.

It was followed shortly by his blue silk tie and his ornate but bloodied vest. 

Before Kakashi knew it, he was down to his suspenders and shirt, his trousers and boots. He looked at Iruka with as much composure as he could muster, even if most of it was utterly false in nature. He was sure he was presenting an aloof, unflustered front, even with the unceasing pink blush painting his features. But it was a real fight to behave that way as tension strung him up and held him painfully in place.

Kakashi only glanced back down when Iruka swept his suspenders from his shoulders and started to unbutton his long-sleeved shirt. He did so with the meticulous care that Kakashi imagined wives used when welcoming their husbands back home from work. He was pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful gentleness evident in Iruka’s actions – he himself had never been concerned with the men that he bought in bars and brothels. He’d been rough with almost all of them, tearing off jackets, destroying shirts, ripping through pants. He’d fucked most men with both of them still wearing their boots. 

In his bandit days, he had fucked men wearing his bandana and eyepatch more often than not.

Iruka dropped Kakashi’s bloody shirt onto the pile of his sheriff clothes with calm elegance guiding his movements. Although Kakashi had imagined, while feeling peculiarly embarrassed by the notion, that Iruka would continue to undress him, instead the other man stepped back – to -

\- to admire the sight of Kakashi bare and available to him.

At the bewildering realization, Kakashi’s blush strengthened in its heat and intensity. He felt dumb and drunk again: he didn’t understand Iruka’s leisurely, even loving attention to him. Not only did he _feel_ exposed, _he was exposed_. Kakashi was keenly aware of his two pistols still resting in their holsters on his hips; he was surprised by their persistent presence. Iruka had seemed wary of his pair of weapons throughout their entire interaction, yet here, in this unbelievable moment, the WANTED vigilante hadn’t let his fear dictate his actions, he hadn’t disarmed Kakashi, he didn’t want him worried about being defenseless. 

Instead, he was considering Kakashi’s endless scarred pale skin suddenly visible and cast in soft moonlight.

Iruka didn’t want to humiliate him. 

He wanted to see him as he truly was, guns and all.

It was _so damn flattering_ – Kakashi was _so terribly flustered_ – he only stayed still out of old reflex – all while his head and heart were being whisked away in a whirlwind of wild thoughts that he couldn’t pick out –

Iruka’s dark interested gaze was taking in Kakashi’s newly visible torso like a war general seriously appraising where to send thousands of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. He stood in front of Kakashi for a long while, his eyes sweeping over Kakashi’s shoulders down his muscular chest and abdomen then back up his hands and arms, only to repeat the motion again. Iruka’s expression stayed rather neutral, but it still seemed deadly intrigued… even captivated by what he was seeing before him.

Kakashi faintly wondered if anyone had ever looked at him like Iruka was doing right now.

“I’ll fix that in a moment,” Iruka murmured. Kakashi followed his gaze, gradually recognizing that the man meant the still slightly bleeding wound in his stomach. He shrugged one shoulder, barely even remembering the injury in all the commotion, but Iruka didn’t appear dissuaded. His face had gone strangely serious when he studied the cut in their changed context, leading Kakashi to wonder, rather amused, if the man might be regretting his earlier action to twist a knife into him.

Yet Iruka didn’t intend on standing still. 

Instead, he started to circle Kakashi, putting his arms behind his back. He ran his shameless gaze over Kakashi at all possible angles, drinking him in like he was something much finer than corn whiskey. Iruka was perfectly serene as he moved; he seemed completely at peace with the truly far-fetched situation unfolding between them in the abandoned homestead. 

When Iruka came back around to face Kakashi, he gestured with a curt nod at the shrapnel scar on Kakashi’s left shoulder – the sunken mess of a thing from when Sasuke had deserted and he’d thrown Naruto ahead of him trying to get back to their infantry line. 

“Artillery, right?” Iruka asked him, although he sounded quite confident in his appraisal, leaving the question to seem almost rhetorical in nature. 

“Yeah,” Kakashi admitted reluctantly. He was unprepared for the subsequent series of questions – he ended up confirming each of them with the same simple word, over and over again, in an increasingly disconcerted daze.

“Minié ball from a rifle?” Iruka’s eyes were stuck on the missing inch of flesh and muscle on Kakashi’s right abdomen several inches above his hipbone. 

After Kakashi’s monotonous confirmation, Iruka’s gaze shot up towards the long thin scar on his right shoulder above Kakashi’s collarbone. He correctly assessed, “A bayonet during a charge?”

Accepting each of Kakashi’s clipped answers, Iruka seemed unperturbed when he started asking more quickly, his voice perfectly steady throughout, “Another rifle shot? There, too? And that’s from a pistol, right? A cavalry saber? A bowie knife?” 

He didn’t have to go behind Kakashi very much as he made his interrogation because almost all of Kakashi’s scars were on his front-side. Very few of Kakashi’s injuries had come from behind; he didn’t let men get the drop on him, he took everything face-forward, and he never retreated. A good number had torn through him, bursting out on his backside, but he always saw the worst of his scars when he chose to look down and judge his life in torn flesh and destroyed skin. 

Nonetheless, Iruka’s endless queries were causing Kakashi’s mind to go blank, blank, blank. The blush had faded long ago from his cheeks. He was gradually growing hollow as he thought about each time that soft lead and hard steel had sunk into his skin, fat, muscle and left him bleeding and seething and struggling to breathe. 

Suddenly concluding his barrage of questions, Iruka finally glanced up to consider Kakashi’s surprised, scarred face and observed in a much gentler tone, “And that’s from a knife.”

Kakashi instantly snapped back at him, “Why do you know so much about scars?”

He clearly recognized the cold fury in his voice, but he found he didn’t care. Squirming sickness was filling the holes in his body from all his war wounds that Iruka had pointed out like an indifferent scholar-scientist dissecting turtles and birds on distant islands. He knew his face had screwed up in his distaste of being observed, scrutinized, investigated, but he didn’t rein in it, letting Iruka know without a lick of remorse that he didn’t appreciate this sort of attention. 

Witnessing Kakashi’s reaction, Iruka stiffened in surprise, and he immediately averted his gaze to the floor. He replied slowly but sincerely, keeping his arms locked behind him, “I don’t. I know about wounds.”

Kakashi felt his damnable interest in the other man trying to overtake his disgust at being inspected so scientifically. He had once wondered about what was now being offered to him – some hint of who Iruka had been beyond his school-teacher profession – but he was still infuriated and thoroughly sickened. He found himself biting out, far colder and snider that he should have been, “And why is that? Did you give up teaching to join the Medical Department during the war?” 

Kakashi realized he was looking down his nose at the other man when he ground out, uncontrollably pissed off, suddenly wanting to wipe the soft apologetic expression from Iruka’s down-turned face: “You enjoy hearing men scream for God and Mother while you sawed up their bodies and swam in their blood?”

Iruka was staring holes into the wooden floor. He had an ugly flush covering his face that spread from his neck up to his scarred tan cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears. After a passing moment, Kakashi properly identified the look: Iruka was ashamed, deeply and truly ashamed. 

But Kakashi didn’t feel remorse for digging into the other man’s past, scratching open whatever old scabbed-over wounds the man had. Still… he found himself surprised to witness such a truly mortified demeanor on the previously confident con man. 

“Ah, no,” Iruka mumbled, hoarse and clumsy. He blinked his way into a wince before he continued: “I buried men in the war, I didn’t – …. I didn’t help the living.” His explanation came out slow and thick like molasses draining from a broken bottle. Iruka’s shoulders gave a slight heave as he sighed out the rest, “I followed the armies to bury the dead. A few times I dug them up when families asked me, but I mostly put men in the ground.”

Kakashi stared at Iruka. 

He suddenly found himself speechless. 

He knew of grave diggers. Of course he did! He’d served all four years in some of the worst battles. Often the victor of battles, Kakashi had observed countless corpse-strewn fields in the aftermath of fighting. He rarely had to experience the nauseating reality of leaving lost soldiers behind unburied. Several times during the war he had watched grave diggers do their work: they were almost always local men of color, brawny and muscular, their dark skin a real contrast with the white boys they were burying in soil, silt, and clay. He knew after several days passed and the grave diggers kept working that the once-white skin of deceased soldiers would get abyssal black and start to slough off and rot away, but his unit never lingered so long that that he had to see that with any real frequency. 

Kakashi barely heard himself as he asked Iruka in confusion, “Why would you… do that?”

Surely Iruka didn’t have to leave his position as a schoolteacher due to the war. Kakashi knew plenty of colleges and schools had stayed open during the war; he’d ransacked a few when they’d encountered them in enemy territory. Of course Iruka might have lost some students who went away to serve in the military, like he certainly had with Naruto. Still, it had seemed by the way that Naruto talked about him that Iruka taught underage boys, not young men on the cusp of adulthood, the kind who’d run off to join the army.

And, shit – burying dead soldiers was a real nasty business. White men never wanted the horrific task, up north or down south; they always left it to free and enslaved men of color in the local area. Both sides’ soldiers suffered through slaughter never before seen, and their corpses were mangled, bloody things of nightmare. Kakashi didn’t know how many men he’d killed as an outlaw, but he’d never seen anything close to the bodily consequences of this past war. Walking the fields after certain battles had made him question everything from God to his sanity to the war itself. He’d had to shove the wet red muscles of his shoulder back into place after Sasuke had deserted, he’d picked at the surgeon’s overly tight metal stitches stuck deep in his inflamed skin, he’d poured alcohol on it to disinfect the healing wound and drank the rest until he fortunately passed out every night for two full straight weeks.

And that was just him dealing with _a single one of his wounds._

He realized Iruka was staring back at him, watching him intently as he remembered the four horrible years of fighting. Kakashi shook his head, tearing his gaze from the other man, feeling inexplicably thrown at how lost he’d gotten thinking about the late war.

But Iruka was easy and calm as he answered Kakashi’s question about his motivation, seemingly unbothered by the other man’s momentary lapse, “I went looking for Naruto and found thousands of other boys instead.” 

Kakashi jerked his head back up to look at Iruka in utter surprise, but Iruka didn’t react to that either. He instead smiled sadly as he shrugged both of his dirty shoulders, clearly feigning carelessness. “How could I leave them there like that? So I stayed and did what I could.” He paused, appearing a little embarrassed with himself, before he admitted in a low voice, looking away from Kakashi, “I… I always hoped someone would do the same for Naruto if he...”

Iruka turned that ugly color again – splotchy red shame coloring his unfairly pretty features. He bunched up his shoulders defensively on instinct and rerouted his arms to cross them over his chest, another obvious self-protective maneuver. Kakashi felt lean and cruel in his partial nudity, in his exceptional array of scars: his strength seemed to be returning to him as Iruka lost his certainty from his visual exploration. He tried not to over-analyze what that was about – why he was running in parallel with the other man, where one of them lost, the other won – because he did want them to be together, in the same way, the same thought, the same victorious moment. 

He certainly didn’t like the look of dark shame saturating Iruka in the pale moonlight.

Kakashi strode forward with deliberate purpose, not hiding the hard steps of his boots on the wood. He caught Iruka under the chin just as the other man looked up at him, having heard his noisy approach. Kakashi was drowning in those dark wondrous eyes a second later, and he was speaking before he even knew what he was wanting to say. 

“I can’t tell you that I would have buried Naruto,” he confessed with painful clarity while physically making sure that Iruka wasn’t able to look away from him. “If Naruto had died during the war, I would have been dead right before him. I was never going to let him die on my watch.” He swallowed down half of his pride and most of his ego and admitted in an almost inaudible whisper while staring deeply into Iruka’s eyes, “I – I cared for the boy. I still do.”

Iruka’s dark eyes did a strange thing that shook Kakashi once he understood what was happening: the man was tearing up, something that Kakashi had really only seen on men this close when he’d killed them soon afterwards. 

Seeing Iruka on the cusp of crying did all sorts of peculiar things to Kakashi: his whole body went tense, his eyes went wide, and his grip on Iruka’s chin tightened. He started to pull away – but then Iruka’s right arm curved around Kakashi’s bare back, his shirt brushing over the small bloody wound on his stomach. He stopped immediately, glancing down at where their bodies were making contact.

Before Kakashi could even look up at him, Iruka caught him completely off guard - _again_.

He might have thought that the man would kiss him finally, but instead Iruka shoved him brutally towards the bed, Kakashi surrendering due to his immense surprise. He felt the hard wood frame of the bed hit the back of legs, and he fell back on the old straw mattress before he could stop himself. 

But Iruka didn’t follow him, didn’t climb on top of him. 

Instead Iruka made fascinatingly swift work of Kakashi’s trousers and his long undergarments, forcing them down around his ankles. He removed Kakashi’s boots with incredible efficiency – something distantly warned Kakashi that the skill was from burying men – and then stripped him the rest of the way. Iruka tossed the remainder of Kakashi’s clothing in the pile where his jacket, vest, and tie were gathered, barely looking as he did so. 

Iruka didn’t waste a second before his right hand found Kakashi’s near-flaccid cock and brought him so easily to full hardness with such speed that Kakashi wondered if the man had been a brothel worker in his spare time. He kept his head back on the mattress, arching up into Iruka’s sweet firm fist. He just barely contained his first strangled sound of arousal and relief. Kakashi brought his hand to his mouth, biting down hard on the bones and muscles of his fingers, trying to keep himself from making overly eager sounds.

He heard himself break his promise straightaway, giving into a gasp that morphed into a throaty groan, as Iruka gave his erect cock a long, luscious lick from base to tip and then swallowed it all down like a sweetly skilled courtesan of the night. 

Kakashi couldn’t control himself from that point on, and he sort of worried about it for the first few seconds, but then that was gone, too, lost as he was in the ocean waves of pleasure crashing through him ceaselessly with the attention Iruka cascaded down upon him. In no time at all, he was wildly gripping the threadbare bedsheets, thrusting up into Iruka’s mouth, all while gasping and panting open-mouthed. His shame was thrown out the window, even while his awareness remained: he knew perfectly well he was fully nude, nothing but endless pale scarred flesh, while Iruka was totally clothed, still in his boots. 

But he just didn’t care. _This_ was worth all the shame in the world.

He hadn’t had _this_ in years – not since the final weeks of the war when he’d caught the interested look of a dark-haired soldier and they’d found a good spot outside of camp far from prying eyes and the man had made it clear that he only wanted to do one thing to Kakashi.

That had been – oh God, that had been more than two years ago.

Iruka wrenched him up by the back of his thighs – and – oh, hell and Heaven Almighty –

Kakashi heard himself whimper through tightly closed lips as Iruka far too passionately licked at his most vulnerable place. His world was tilting all weird and wonderful; his breath was irregular and wild. His legs shook in Iruka’s hands, not that Iruka seemed to notice or mind. Kakashi wanted to touch himself – and he did, groaning at the sudden contact, even though he’d expected it. His body was relaxing even further as he stroked himself, and he felt the very second that Iruka’s tongue entered him, and he choked back a truly profane moan at the new blissful sensation.

He was writhing a minute later when Iruka replaced his tongue with one finger – then soon two – and Kakashi threw his hand to his side, off his cock, abruptly unwilling to come this way before he was actually properly fucked. He could tell that Iruka had somehow magically produced something slick and had generously applied it to his fingers, not relying on salvia for this to be good, like he was a God damn gentleman and this wasn’t rushed backwoods sex. Kakashi’s hands were shaking crazily on the bedsheets, as was he, but he didn’t care at all, he was so damn relieved and excited and delirious with it all. 

Iruka was obviously, indecently, absolutely pouring all of his attention into preparing Kakashi and making him feel good. He was continually moving his fingers within him, clearly relishing the loud lewd sounds that Kakashi was making as well as the wet obscene ones that he himself was creating between Kakashi’s legs. But he finally and forcefully spoke up, his voice having taken on a gravelly desperate pleading quality, “How do you want to –”

“I want to ride you,” Kakashi answered instantly without a bit of shame.

Clearly Iruka had some embarrassment still left in his soul, because he swore under his breath at Kakashi’s obscene honesty, before he stood up, flung his boots aside, and tore off his trousers at a truly shocking speed. He still had on his long-sleeved dirty shirt when he unceremoniously pushed Kakashi towards the end of the bed and settled down with his back flat against the mattress. Iruka’s hands were quick to slather the nearly-clear oil on his hard cock before he reached for Kakashi like one might beckon a long-time lover into an embrace after months of torturous separation – desperate, familiar, violently wanting.

There was a single knife-sharp moment where Kakashi saw himself like he was among the stars and the sky –

He was panting, unable to catch his breath – half-sprawled across old bedsheets – down to his bare, scarred, flushed skin – his white-silver hair a wicked disheveled mess – both eyes open and fixed on the dark-featured man laid out before him – his half-blind red eye and its long scar exposed – 

He straddled Iruka like he’d been there before, naturally situating himself to take in Iruka’s deliciously large cock. More delirious than he’d thought he’d be, Kakashi shuddered full-body as he pushed downwards on Iruka’s hard arousal. He rolled his hips as he settled down on the other man’s cock, arching his back and clenching his thighs. He heard himself give a truly indecent moan when he fully took in all Iruka had to offer; Kakashi could barely hear anything else, just his own frantic reactions, dark and crazed and quick. His hands came down hard on Iruka’s still-clothed shoulders, which he clutched at madly, desperately relieved to have something to hold onto while he rode the other man for his own pleasure.

Six fucking years of _nothing_ like this – and, God, this was so much better, so so so much better than his fantasies – _any_ of his fantasies – 

Kakashi started moving on top of Iruka at a wild rapid pace, not looking at the other man as he did so. He couldn’t force himself to even glance at Iruka’s face as he used the gunslinger for his own desires. He felt not a trace of shame as he fucked Iruka and made Iruka fuck him – he only felt _finally_ filled again, the empty spots in his body and soul disappearing, every last bit of Iruka underneath him and inside him and _overwhelming him_ –

He finally found it – that perfect spot deep inside him – and Kakashi pushed backwards off of Iruka’s shoulders, his right hand going to his aching cock, his left clenching Iruka’s sweaty chiseled abdomen. He was far out of practice being on top another man, but his body remembered the motions easily enough, and his thighs’ protest at being overused were silenced by the impossibly fine feeling of Iruka’s cock deep within him. He tightened his grip on his own cock, moving way too fast and far too roughly, but the whole God blessed thing was just what he’d wanted _for so fucking long_ –

Kakashi came well before he imagined he would, but he didn’t feel the least embarrassed – he felt so good in ways he hadn’t in years, years, years. He threw back his head as his orgasm rushed over him, causing him to seize up and shake on top of Iruka. He knew he was digging the nails of his left hand into Iruka’s abdomen with excessive cruelty and force, leaving crescent-shaped bruises behind, but he _loved_ the feeling of Iruka’s sweaty skin and hard muscle under his tense trembling fingers. He just barely peeled open his eyes to see the last of his cum streak across Iruka’s brown abdomen, and he was drunkenly satisfied by the sight, feeling years of tension slipping out of his bones and his soul during his much-needed release. 

Iruka grabbed him by the waist and flipped him over to land on his back.

He didn’t put up much of a struggle in the last lingering throes of his ecstasy. Instead, Kakashi found himself staring in surprise at what he was now realizing was a terribly aroused Iruka – who had not gotten _his_ desired climax just yet. He knew his own pale skin must have been glowing pink-red with pleasure and relief. He could barely keep his sex-drowsy eyes open, the half-blind scarred one closing more than the other. He only noticed he’d parted his lips, his tongue wetly brushing his bottom lip, when Iruka’s gaze darkened and narrowed on the sight, and then he announced in rough warning, “I’m going to fuck you now.”

Kakashi numbly nodded his head, his world already spinning. He realized that Iruka had shoved up his legs to fuck him an obscene angle, wanting all of his cock within Kakashi, and he went about it rightaway, pushing entirely inside just moments later. Kakashi was all pained breaths for a second, unbelievably filled and stretched, not really having expected the sensation when he wasn’t controlling it. But, as Iruka pulled out and then thrust in again, Kakashi’s senses spun backwards into oversensitive pleasure, and he was soon gasping out at each plunge of Iruka’s cock within him. 

This time, he found himself wanting to see Iruka’s face, maybe because he’d already come, maybe because he’d already totally embarrassed himself by acting like a weak-hearted whore wanting badly to ride cock all night. 

He was so surprised to witness Iruka’s intensity that Kakashi choked back a gasp down in his throat. 

He could feel his eyes widening at the vision above him. Even though his half-blind one didn’t work well, he found himself desperately willing it to work how it used to.

Iruka’s pretty dark brown hair was loosely crowding his flushed face. His eyes were unfocused and yet still obsessively roaming Kakashi’s sweaty scarred chest and abdomen. His whole body was enthralled with fucking Kakashi, his every muscle bulging, even the ones under his clinging long-sleeved shirt. Unlike how Kakashi had been while riding him, Iruka wasn’t remotely shaking: he was astonishingly stable as he drove relentlessly into Kakashi. His grip on the back of Kakashi’s thighs was just as bruising as Kakashi had been with him moments earlier.

Kakashi found that he was outright grinning at the very idea that Iruka was going to leave bruises on him – an action that he really only discovered he was doing when Iruka glanced up at him through his hair and suddenly caught the darkly pleased look on his face.

For a slow long second, Iruka stilled his constant thrusting while looking down at Kakashi, their gazes hotly meeting, and then he suddenly said, both breathless and careless at once, “I’ve had dreams where I fucked you like this.”

A wild irrepressible shiver flew over Kakashi hearing Iruka’s hasty confession. His hands moved out of his control, and he grabbed at Iruka’s arms, finally enclosing around his wrists. He treasured the sharpness of Iruka’s bones, the taut tendons of his forearms, the throbbing pulse in his blood-rich veins. He forced his eyes to stay open as Iruka urgently resumed fucking him, even though he wanted to squeeze them as tight as he was now grasping at Iruka’s wrists.

He said it without thinking, but he said it, anyway – 

“Then fuck me, Iruka.”

A new sick sinister sort of pleasure filled Kakashi as Iruka shuddered over him, inside him. The other man closed his eyes shut so hard that the scar across his face scrunched up. Kakashi was not so pleased a second later when Iruka entirely pulled out of him – and then drove back into him with enough force that the bed cracked furiously underneath them and the back of Kakashi’s head hit the wall behind the bed. 

He couldn’t catch his breath once it left him. 

Instead he listened to Iruka’s harsh breathing above him, and he couldn’t help but be filled with not just the man’s lusciously thick cock but also the sheer satisfaction of how much Iruka wanted him, wanted this, wanted to be with him right now. He couldn’t help but wonder at the idea that Iruka had _dreamt about him_ \- when he hadn’t remembered the man at all – and a weird twisting shame suddenly lurched up his throat – and he stared up at Iruka with new frenzied concern.

“Iruka,” he halfway gasped out, attracting the other man’s gaze to his, even as Iruka continued fucking him with astonishing strength. Kakashi’s face was burning hot, but he could also feel the pained rise and fall of his chest, like he was nearing panic. His eyes were doing something strange – they were brimming with tears – and he didn’t understand why – the pleasure of it all, the confusion of who Iruka was, the worry of his life and time and his crimes and the war –

Surprising him to his core, Iruka let Kakashi’s legs drop down, and he leaned across Kakashi, catching his scarred left cheek with one hand. Even though Kakashi was still somehow expecting Iruka to kiss him, instead the other man simply stared into his mismatched eyes and breathed out shakily, “Kakashi – I don’t want to – to hurt you –”

“God, you’re not hurting me,” Kakashi countered instantly, shifting his hands to Iruka’s waist and pulling him forward, forcing Iruka’s cock back into him as deeply as it could go. He didn’t even care when his voice came out in a dark whine, “Please, just fuck me.”

Iruka answered by keeping his new more intimate position, moving his hands to hold Kakashi’s hipbones with strange sensitivity. He slowed down his pace, his black eyes softening. He moved more gently, and Kakashi found he couldn’t catch his breath for a sudden new reason.

They had been fucking a second ago – but now – now they were making love.

Kakashi recognized the difference on instinct: it sent him blushing and cast every single thought from his mind. He couldn’t find the strength to sustain eye contact with Iruka, who was pure intensity made incarnate in the intricate form of a former school-teacher, battlefield grave digger, and WANTED gunslinger. Kakashi was well past his orgasm, but his body was singing the sensitive delight of renewed arousal. He couldn’t bear to touch his rising erection and instead clenched at the bedsheets while Iruka moved sweetly in and out of him like they had all the time and love left in the world.

When Iruka finally came, he did so with a soft sigh of Kakashi’s name.

He pulled out a few moments later, leaving Kakashi behind as he sought out a spare shirt from the bedroom bureau. Without looking at him, Iruka presented the old piece of clothing in an oddly embarrassed gesture before he cleaned himself off as well. Kakashi evened out his breathing as he took care of his personal clean-up, marveling in the back of his mind that this was Iruka’s actual cum coating between his legs. He finally looked back up at the other man and found he was studying the back of Iruka’s dirty pale shirt, the man’s trousers barely hanging onto his hips.

Iruka was standing right beside the moonlit window, staring down at a rolled cigarette between two of his fingers. After a moment, he struck a match on the windowsill, lit the cigarette, put it to his lips – the lips that Kakashi had yet to kiss or touch in any way. He was silent in a way that he hadn’t been the entire time that Kakashi had known him… Kakashi found it truly unnerving.

“What do you want to do next?” Kakashi finally asked, bringing up the most obvious issue. He wasn’t sure how to feel about what they had just done – he was unable to comprehend how very good everything had felt – but he realized that his confusion about it was primarily due to Iruka’s unresponsive nature in the minutes after their fucking… their love-making. 

Barely a breath later, Iruka returned to the bed, lit cigarette in hand. He sat down beside Kakashi and wordlessly offered him a smoke, which Kakashi took with a soundless shrug of his bare scarred shoulders. He enjoyed the puff of grey smoke, the spark of red flame. But he also felt a wisp of pleasure at the sight of Iruka watching him as he smoked. Kakashi titled his head to the side, raking his messy gaze up and down Iruka’s still-flushed scarred face. 

“We can go again whenever you want,” he suggested easily. Kakashi wasn’t going to deny how much he enjoyed everything with Iruka – and he certainly wanted to see if it would happen again. He knew he was smiling, low and pleased, something he wanted to display prominently.

Iruka considered him with a steadfast steely gaze. 

Then he leaned forward towards Kakashi.

Kakashi’s heart-rate, which had slowed down considerably over the last few minutes, picked up like he was suddenly being shot at. He found himself staring wide-eyed, having gone fantastically still, watching Iruka close the distance between them. He nearly crushed the lit cigarette in his fingers, wondering desperately if Iruka was going to finally kiss him –

And Iruka did kiss him – 

Except Iruka only kissed his scarred cheek before he said softly into his ear, “I need to sleep some.”

“Yeah, of course,” Kakashi answered immediately, unthinkingly. He went along with Iruka’s next movements like mindless machinery. He dressed himself back up – his undergarments, trousers, shirt – and laid against the wall, letting Iruka have the easiest access to get out of bed. 

But Iruka climbed over him like he was merely a broken twig in the road, taking over his spot and giving Kakashi the side by the nightstand. Before Kakashi could ask why he preferred that position, he was baffled to realize that Iruka had instantly – and it truly happened in a single instant – passed out. He shook Iruka’s shoulder a little, trying to see if Iruka was faking for some unknowable reason, but he was fully floored to find that Iruka was genuinely _completely_ unconscious. 

Kakashi slid down beside him, utterly bewildered by everything that had just happened.

But sleep overtook him swiftly… 

… and then Kakashi dreamed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter in our saga of star-crossed lovers in Old West Konoha...
> 
>  
> 
> _____

He was carrying a corpse. 

Kakashi dropped the body into the ditch, fell to his knees, put his hands on his face. His chest was heaving, he was covered in blood and dirt. He couldn’t catch his breath. He was shaking.

He opened his good eye and stared down at the dead man.

It was him. Of course it was him. 

Even though he avoided mirrors - _hell, he avoided glass and water, too, he hated how he looked_ – Kakashi recognized his own corpse. He knew that silver hair, that scarred white skin, that emaciated figure. He pressed his fingers down on the old wound sliding through his face, moving from his forehead to his closed eye, stopping at his black beauty mark below the scar. He saw how his fingers shook, but Kakashi couldn’t hold himself together in the slightest.

He grabbed the front of the corpse’s dark blue military uniform, jerking the whole body upright. 

Kakashi seethed something empty and incoherent at his dead self and received no reply. Filled to the brim with dissatisfaction and disappointment, he dropped his corpse back in the ditch. Through it all, he was too afraid to look left or right at the other dead men beside him. 

He knew who was laid down dead beside his own body. His damn deserted protégé, Sasuke… his fucked-up half-son of a boy, Naruto… his closest friends from childhood, the ones who’d died horrifically on the botched raid that left him with the scar on his face… his best friend he couldn’t visit, Gai, the man who didn’t know what he looked like, who only cared about the promise of one’s heart and soul…

Kakashi’s shoulders slumped. He could barely feel the tears on his face. He felt numb.

_So very numb._

“I’ll fix that in a moment.”

His bad eye snapped open, blurring his vision some. Kakashi stared at the man in front of him: he was wearing dirty, ragged clothes and looked bone-weary, but his dark brown eyes were warm, even as his smile was truly sorrowed. He realized after a beat that it was Iruka Umino, the teacher that Naruto had talked about while weeping in the darkness and covered in blood. 

He hazily remembered that they had slept together… and that Iruka had seen him nude. The man had seen all his scars, all his open wounds, all of his ugly past… and he had stayed with him. 

Iruka leaned across the ditch and stretched out his hand. After pushing aside the sheriff jacket, Iruka’s fingertips just barely touched his shirt – brushing over Kakashi’s heart.

Kakashi’s dead flesh was warming, his vision chasing away storm-clouds. He shifted forward into Iruka’s hand as his breath evened out. Unable to tear his eyes away from the man crouched comfortably over his corpse, Kakashi murmured in a daze, “Fix what…?”

“Your broken heart, of course.”

Kakashi flew out of bed.

He stumbled over the wooden end-board, tripping so badly that he nearly broke his nose on the wide-open door. He hung onto the doorframe, dripping sweat off his panic-stricken face. 

After another second, Kakashi flung off his shirt and gripped his artillery scar on his left shoulder, the one that he’d gotten when Sasuke deserted, when he threw Naruto ahead of him, when he thought he was going to die. It was familiar deep sunken flesh, ridged with serrated lines of stitches long gone. He ran his fingers over the scar, over and over, desperately using its existence to reassure him of his own current state. He was alive. _He hadn’t died in the war._ He wasn’t a corpse in a distant ditch; somehow, he had survived the war. 

_He’d killed so many people. Christ’s blood on the cross. How was he still alive._

Not looking at a thing around him, Kakashi slunk back to the bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress and stared emptily at his hands on his knees, resting them palms upwards. 

He’d never had that dream before – that nightmare? He had buried himself. His old self. 

Without meaning to, Kakashi’s shoulders stiffened. 

Iruka had woken up, was moving closer to him. He couldn’t look over at the man. He couldn’t face him, couldn’t confront what was waiting on the teacher’s scarred skin. Kakashi was suddenly sick with himself, wondering how he had managed to get this far in life, confused how he had lived so long. 

All of a sudden, he couldn’t understand it – just how he had survived so many brawls and battles when so many people were blown to bloody bits and left behind to decompose out in the sun. 

And now he was acting like he was the lover of a man who had refused to kill others for a paycheck – and chosen instead to bury their rotting bodies out of respect. 

Every inch of him felt corrupted, like diseased pus-filled pox covered his entire body.

“Kakashi…?” came the soft voice beside him, so very soft that it hurt him deep inside.

He slowly turned both eyes to see that Iruka was sitting up beside him, giving him the most woeful and worried expression that he had ever seen in his life. The same dark brown eyes that earlier burned him and enticed him were weak and wondering as Iruka stared at him in concern. 

In the pale moonlight, Kakashi could see the wrinkles around Iruka’s eyes, lines of stress writ into his skin from so much compassion bursting out of him.

He couldn’t imagine what he looked like in the darkness. Was he still the corpse from the dream? Was he lively and wild, like in the old days? Was he serious and somber, sitting by a campfire?

Iruka was leaning towards him, his hand pulling at Kakashi’s left shoulder, the one with the massive mess of a scar from the artillery shell shattering and slamming into his skin. Iruka’s expression was shifting into something familiar and unfamiliar all at once. Kakashi could see it suddenly: he recognized what was about to happen, but his scarred skin still felt impossibly numb. 

Even his soul felt dead far underneath his mortal flesh.

But then Kakashi finally got his kiss.

And soon he knew he was no longer in his nightmare.

Iruka was _unbearably_ gentle with him. The other man’s tender care made Kakashi’s muscles ache, his bones turn brittle. He closed his eyes, wondering at the wet brush of his own eyelashes on his cheeks. Kakashi was moving his head instinctively, wanting more of the kiss without forcing anything between them, and Iruka responded soundlessly, further turning his own scarred face in silent understanding. 

Kakashi had rarely treated anyone like how Iruka was kissing him. He felt like his very body was melting like candle-wax, pooling down on the floor. The anxious tension of his nightmare – and the near-ceaseless fear from being an outlaw, soldier, and sheriff – seemed to be slipping off his skin in cool sweat. Kakashi was clutching at Iruka’s clothed shoulders: he knew he was gripping too hard, but he gloried in the visceral sure feel of muscle and bone under his hands. 

Iruka was kissing him _so slowly_ … it was truly divine torture. 

He wanted harder, faster, more – but, then again, Kakashi was becoming weak being kissed with such sweet care. He felt Iruka’s fingers dip down into his artillery scar, slide up his neck, thread through his white-silver hair; each and every slight touch made him shiver like he was caught out in a cold rain-shower. Kakashi wanted to do more than hold onto Iruka, but he found himself barely able to think. He wasn’t shaking or feeling faint, but he _was_ frantically using Iruka for stability and security. He couldn’t imagine moving his hands just yet, maybe not ever.

As if Iruka understood that Kakashi had become frozen in his desperation, the other man fell backwards on the mattress, pulling Kakashi with him, situating him fully over his body. 

They kissed throughout the movement, still awfully slow and sweet.

Iruka wasn’t pushing him farther; they weren’t doing anything more carnal than the very briefest touch of their tongues. Instead, their kisses were slow and sensitive to Kakashi’s unspoken needs. He could feel his whole body wanting to fall apart as Iruka took care of him. And he was just letting it happen. He wanted it to happen with everything still left alive inside him. 

He knew his soul was already in ruins well before this but, damn, if it didn’t feel like Iruka was rebuilding something deep within him. It was as if Iruka was smoothing out the ragged edges of his spirit and cleaning up the bleeding wounds that he’d never before tried to repair. 

Kakashi shuddered when Iruka pulled away and kissed the scar through his cheek. 

“Do you want…” the other man whispered near his half-blind eye.

“Yes, Christ, I want you,” Kakashi muttered back at him, suddenly frantic to have the other man. He swiftly removed the rest of his clothes as he kissed down on the slope of Iruka’s neck to where he’d shoved the pistol. He lingered at the gold-brown bruise just barely visible in the darkness of the night. Iruka was equally inspired, urgently taking off his trousers and drawers, tossing them off the bed in a growing pile of discarded garments. 

But, when Kakashi reached for Iruka’s long-sleeved shirt to take it off, Iruka’s hands abruptly redirected to his forearms and held him still with impressive strength.

Kakashi looked up at him in the moonlight, wondering what the other man meant by such a sudden forceful motion. He was surprised to see that Iruka’s expression had flooded with frightful tension, his hurt brown eyes looking like half-moons, his lips held tightly shut. Although he refused to shift backwards, Kakashi did release his loose grip on Iruka’s shirt, and he asked quietly, “What’s the matter? You know I don’t care about scars.”

As if to prove his point, Kakashi found himself shifting his left shoulder, knowing the old artillery wound looked grotesque even in the dark of the night. He stayed half-hovering over Iruka, keeping his position of dominance, if only because he was curious, even concerned at the unexpected change in Iruka’s demeanor and sudden conclusion of the sugary-sweet exchange between them. 

Iruka’s dark eyes were feverishly searching his face. The other man was breathing shallowly as he clearly thought about what he wanted to say. Kakashi realized that he’d seen Iruka making this same expression before – three days ago, in the alleyway, when he was considering what to do with Kakashi forced up against the wall, his pistol trained on his stomach. 

It was the same look of confused contemplative tension Iruka had just before he decided against shooting Kakashi and had instead run away…

Tonight, Iruka’s hands slowly lifted and caught Kakashi’s forearms again. He finally stopped his searching gaze and stared deeply into Kakashi’s eyes, his decision unmistakably made. 

He did so with such intensity that Kakashi recognized something _different_ was happening between them.

_He looks like he’s about to confess to a murder._

And Iruka did not disappoint.

His voice wasn’t breathless or careless; Iruka spoke with precise clarity and at a perfected pace. His eyes never drifted away from Kakashi’s, his hands remained firm on Kakashi’s arms.

“My last lover tried to kill Naruto. I stopped him.”

Kakashi was so impossibly stunned by the statement that he almost didn’t realize that Iruka was continuing to speak at the same speed, his voice never once breaking.

His words spilled out like blood gushing from a gunshot wound.

“He went to prison,” Iruka explained simply, his dark gaze on Kakashi’s surprised face. “When the war started, they let him out to serve in the army. He sent me a letter, saying he would find Naruto and kill him. I went after him, but I never caught up with him – or Naruto.”

Before Kakashi could even manage to understand the full extent of Iruka’s confession, he saw the other man’s expression darken, deepen into another too-familiar sight…

A furious shadow of violence fell over Iruka’s scarred face.

“Two weeks after the war ended, I found him.”

Iruka’s eyes flashed – and Kakashi felt ice and frost fill his deepest bone marrow.

“I left his body for rats to eat.”

But then, just as suddenly, Iruka’s expression weakened. His gaze softened; he looked as if depression and misery had dogged him all the way to this very day. He was much quieter when he began to speak again, sounding like it was him who’d been shot and fed to wild beasts.

“Afterwards, I heard from people that it was normal in some places for criminals to be let out to serve in the war. And now they were coming back and acting as if they hadn’t killed women and children.” Obviously still disgusted with the idea, Iruka shook his head back and forth, seemingly nearly biting down on his tongue, before he said with increasing fury, “I found the WANTED lists and started tracking them down. _There were so many._ ”

Feeling strangely unable to breathe, Kakashi watched as Iruka finally couldn’t endure any more eye contact between the two of them and looked down off to the right to where he’d been sleeping against the wall. “I couldn’t protect Naruto back then. I mean, I did, I stopped Mizuki – but, after what happened, Naruto was different. He wanted to fight. He wanted to help other people… in all the worst ways. The war broke out, and he joined immediately, saying he couldn’t stand by and see innocent people hurt.”

Kakashi felt his heart jump in his chest as Iruka’s dark eyes went watery and his face contorted in unhidden emotional anguish. “He said he wanted to be like me. Isn’t that sick? All I did was stand in front of him, I couldn’t even kill Mizuki. I just let Naruto beat him up and the sheriff take him away, trusting that it would all work out…” 

Surprising Kakashi endlessly, Iruka gave a short bitter laugh before he admitted, “When I found him after the war, I’d buried so many boys that killing didn’t seem so horrible. Leaving Mizuki alive, _that_ felt like betraying every single soldier I’d put in the ground. How could they be dead when he was out in the world, alive and well?” Iruka’s face loosened up as his anger dissipated, and he ended up looking sadly at the old bedsheets beside them. “I blamed you for so long, but it was me who ruined him. I didn’t do right by him before the war. I should have taken care of Mizuki back then, but I was a fool. I thought justice was prison, not taking a man’s life.”

As if he was abruptly wracked with waves of pain, Iruka shut his eyes and squeezed down on Kakashi’s forearms. “I’ve got nothing left to lose. I don’t know where Naruto is. I can’t teach anymore without seeing the faces of dead men on my students. I killed a man in Suna last week because he’d ravished a woman and got away with it because he shot well in the war, and I ended up killing a sheriff who tried to take me into jail, and I know he’s got a wife, and I’m going straight to hell when I die, that’s all I think about now, except that I hope I find Mizuki down there and get to choke the breath out of him before I burn for the rest of eternity.”

Kakashi was staring wide-eyed down at the other man when Iruka suddenly concluded his monologue.

He was still staring several moments later when Iruka looked back at him, tears escaping his despondent eyes and dripping down his scarred cheeks.

He muttered something stupid and short, like: “Well, shit, Iruka.”

Iruka further surprised by sitting up and removing his shirt with incredible efficiency. He pulled Kakashi’s right hand forward and then around to his back, directing him with serene ease towards what Kakashi instantly realized was a truly massive scar from a bowie knife.

“Christ,” Kakashi swore under his breath, blindly looking over Iruka’s nude shoulder at the wall. He used his fingers to trace the full length of the scar and found it an indecent seven-eight inches, its deepest recess at the bottom and rising upwards until the flesh was barely indented. Whoever this insane Mizuki character was, he had clearly intended on gutting Naruto, stabbing in deep and then yanking up, but he’d gotten Iruka’s back instead, completing the same motion but on truly different flesh.

Truth be told, Mizuki had very nearly sliced open Iruka’s spine. The scar was a few inches to the right of his spine, but it still must have severed muscle and nerve, certainly leaving Iruka a weak convalescent in bed for months. 

Kakashi wore nothing as profound as Iruka’s knife scar. 

Sure, his artillery scar was grossly deep, visibly disturbing, but the man who had loaded the canister shell into the cannon had never looked into Kakashi’s eyes, never seen him nude, never heard Kakashi gasp out his name, never had Kakashi caress him in the throes of passion. 

Even the minié ball that took an inch out of him over his right hipbone – he didn’t know which man had shot him out on the battlefield.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. He’d killed dozens of enemy soldiers that same day. He barely had seen their eyes, let alone stared into their mortal souls or coaxed them to ecstasy.

Kakashi found himself adjusting Iruka without asking, turning him around slightly, so he could better see the entirety of the scar. He didn’t balk when Iruka resisted for a second and instead kept persisting. Iruka finally surrendered, his brown muscular skin rippling with tension. He had begun to tremble under Kakashi’s hands, but he made no sound at all, remaining utterly silent after his confession.

Iruka’s scar was truly something.

Even though Kakashi had over a dozen prominent scars himself, he kept glancing up and down Iruka’s sunken flesh, trying to understand how the other man could have survived such an injury. Certainly, the man’s heart seemed broken by the incident, but the physical wound itself must have been horrifically gruesome, especially in the first few minutes and days after the attack. 

Of course Naruto had been inspired by Iruka’s courage and defense of him. 

He’d seen his teacher – his father figure! – heroically protect him, suddenly transform into a sacrificial martyr. 

_Naruto must have been swimming in blood when he held Iruka afterwards._

Kakashi looked over Iruka’s nude form for the first time. The man was almost entirely unscarred except the mark on his face – and the enormous old wound on his back. In Kakashi’s blurry half-blind gaze, Iruka was fascinatingly pretty when bared to the world. He was stocky, built, and muscular in ways that Kakashi had never been in his life – and never could be. 

It was incredible to think that the same time that Iruka had unwillingly let Naruto out of his sight, that Naruto had come into _his_ life. The full four years of the war, Kakashi had almost never allowed Naruto to leave his side. He’d constantly kept the boy beside him, trying to train him, hold him together, reassure him that Sasuke would come back. 

Only when Naruto furiously declared that he was heading south to find Sasuke after the war had Kakashi been forced to abandon him. 

He just couldn’t fight anymore. He couldn’t kill any more men. 

But Naruto wasn’t done, not if it meant that he could get his best friend back.

And so Kakashi went west while Naruto went south.

Without thinking a single thing, his mind gone blank, Kakashi leaned forward and kissed Iruka’s scar. He instantly felt – and saw – Iruka respond: the other man straightened to his full sitting height, his whole body tensing all over, his hands gripping the bedsheets with brutal panic. 

But Kakashi wasn’t dissuaded, not at all. 

Instead, he kept kissing Iruka’s scar, starting where the knife had entered, where the wound was deepest. He moved upward with the same slow care that Iruka had showed him when they were kissing earlier. He kept going past the scar, shifting over to kissing Iruka’s spine, coming up to his hair, which Kakashi also kissed, ignoring the ticklish fit that tried to overwhelm him. 

Kakashi put both his arms around the other man, pulling him flush against his scarred chest. He breathed into Iruka’s ear, making sure he sounded serious but keeping his tone soft, “If I get there first, I’m going to tear that man apart. I’m sorry if there’s nothing left when you show up.”

He ran his hand down Iruka’s bare chest and abdomen, enjoying his first feel of the man’s chiseled muscles, before he continued, easily admitting his true feelings on the matter, “But I don’t actually think you’re going to hell. Your only sin is being sweet and pretty to villains like me.”

Before Kakashi could get a firm hold on him, Iruka twisted halfway back towards him. He was suddenly giving a dark scolding stare. “You’re not a villain.”

“You’re only saying that because you took my virginity,” Kakashi dismissed with a slight smirk, trying not to show his surprise at the intensity of Iruka’s glare once again directed at him.

“No,” Iruka snapped, a familiar bright heat returning to his voice. “I know villains. You’re not one.” Kakashi found himself flushing in embarrassment as Iruka scrutinized him further, turning around fully and staring at him directly in the face. “I didn’t think I would understand Naruto after the war, but I do. He’s ashamed about some of what he’s done – but not everything. And he desperately wants his friend back.” Suddenly ruthless and omniscient, Iruka seemed to hold Kakashi captive with his piercing stare. Kakashi felt caught between blushing and going pale as the other man asserted, “He doesn’t want to be alone. He’s scared he’s broken, he hurts he’s so lonely. _You’re just like him._ ”

He suddenly felt exposed again – not just his skin and scars, but his soul, too.

Kakashi slunk back a little in the bed, recoiling from the other man. 

_God damn it, they were right: Iruka Umino is dangerous and not to be underestimated._

With determination saturating his every feature, Iruka followed him and pushed him down on the mattress, leaving Kakashi to stare up in open astonishment at him. He was unprepared for Iruka to touch the very center of his chest, his sternum, over his heart – _oh, God, where Iruka had touched in his dream-nightmare_ – and then Iruka was leaning down to kiss him on the lips.

But, before they kissed again, Iruka said softly, honestly: 

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll never be able to kill you.”

It was strangely – so very strangely – the kindest thing anyone had ever said to Kakashi.

He captured Iruka in a kiss more violent than the other man intended; Kakashi was remorseless in forcing their kiss to become harder, rougher, deeper. He was even more unsparing and unsympathetic when he roughly shoved Iruka backwards on the mattress. He went instantly to Iruka’s neck, to the bruise that he’d given the man earlier: Kakashi bit over the very same mark, on some primal instinct, fiercely determined to write over the past with new violence.

Underneath him, Iruka was writhing against him, their nude bodies sliding fully together for the first time. Kakashi’s right hand forced Iruka’s shoulder down, but his other hand went straight to Iruka’s cock, mercilessly rousing him to hardness. After a moment, he returned to kissing the other man, feeling satisfied that he’d bruised Iruka enough to cover the old mark. 

Kakashi nearly startled when Iruka grabbed his hand and pushed it down further, obviously pointing out where he needed to be so they could truly continue their affair. He might have blushed at the insistence of the other man, but instead he found himself both pleased and relieved that Iruka wanted the same thing as him – he wanted Kakashi to fuck him this time.

He started to speak, but, on cue, Iruka miraculously produced a small bottle, closing Kakashi’s fingers around in it, before he dragged Kakashi back down into a terrific kiss. 

Although he had very much not practiced on himself or other men in several years, Kakashi remembered the motions of opening up his lover, and he did so with tremendous more care and affection than he had ever used before with anyone else. 

He kissed Iruka’s cheek, jawline, ear, neck, as he moved his slick fingers in between the other man’s thighs, pressing deep within him. 

Kakashi felt the same sadistic thrill as earlier in the day when Iruka began to make small sweet gasps of pleasure and surprise at Kakashi’s relentless ardent attention to him.

He was terribly surprised when Iruka suddenly grabbed both his bare shoulders, clutching at Kakashi’s artillery scar without the least bit of fear, and whispered desperately into his white-silver hair, “Please, Kakashi, _please_.”

In his long fucked-up life, Kakashi had always imagined himself the epitome of strong. He had never attended school, but he pictured opening a dictionary and looking up ‘strength’ and seeing a little dark sketch of his face with his scarred eye and upswept hair. He’d taken pride in persevering through so many bad situations – in his many years as a bandit, the four years of war, the two years as sheriff – when he knew others would have given up. Even when Kakashi had decided to surrender earlier in the night and accept death, he’d not considered a sign of weakness, but a recognition of his time finally being up and finally welcoming his destiny to die this day, this way, by this man alone.

But, as Kakashi glanced down to see Iruka’s expression, he rewrote everything.

He was weak.

He was so weak.

Iruka was gazing up at him with dark brown eyes full of warmth and unashamed fondness. His face was so sweetly flushed – like it had been six years ago at the bank, and outside by the vegetable garden, and hours earlier when he was on top of Kakashi – but there was something new and delightful in his expression. It was something dangerous and empowered, something that made only Kakashi nod obediently and move between Iruka’s thighs instantaneously.

He remembered how Iruka had made love to him – and he wanted that again, _now_.

Kakashi had very little experience making love truthfully, but he felt differently with Iruka, even different than he had felt with him just a few hours earlier. He was gentle pushing up Iruka’s legs, gentle pushing into him, gentle leaning down to kiss him through his first few thrusts. 

Through it all, he could tell that Iruka enjoyed it… his slow care.

 _That_ made him feel strong – strong and good – and Kakashi felt no sense of shame as he sought out another kiss from Iruka. He brushed his hand through the other man’s hair with much more intimate familiarity than they should actually share between them, but Iruka was still looking up at him with dark-eyed adoration, and so Kakashi kissed him again, unable and unwilling to stop himself from treating Iruka like a life-long lover.

He slowed down even further, trying to memorize the feel of Iruka.

Everything from Iruka’s muscular arms swung over his shoulders, Iruka’s scarred cheek against his own, Iruka’s strong waist and pronounced hipbones, Iruka’s wicked legs tight around him… 

Iruka’s body wanting him, drawing him in, begging him for more.

Fuck. 

Kakashi was truly surprised when his orgasm started to roar over him. 

He looked sharply at Iruka, who moved his head backwards to catch his changing expression. Once the other man seemed to understand what was happening, Iruka’s warm eyes went scorching hot, and he nearly slammed their faces together in a shockingly forceful kiss. Down by his abdomen, Kakashi could feel Iruka’s hand suddenly grab his own arousal. With startling quickness, he realized that Iruka had clearly been on the precipice of his own orgasm – but had been holding off from falling into full indulgence.

Then, underneath him, all around him, Kakashi felt Iruka shudder, squeeze him tight.

His gasp came out breathy, lovely, dark.

Kakashi bowed his head down involuntarily as he felt his own pleasure hit him. His shoulders shook, his body moved out of his control. He was suddenly out of breath, he was panting again. 

Iruka’s hand was on his scarred cheek. He opened his eyes, and Iruka smiled up at him, slow and pleased.

He wasn’t sure which one of them went for it first, but suddenly they were kissing again, just like how they had right after his nightmare, his dream.

It was gentle and familiar, reassuring and true.

At some point, they stopped and cleaned up – and then kissed again while holding each other.

As much as Kakashi had let go of all of his shame earlier in the night, he continued to feel no embarrassment or worry as he spent the next few hours with Iruka.

It felt like time didn’t exist, and the sun would never rise.

And – he suddenly thought he was hallucinating – because _the damn sun was out._

Fucking hell, he’d fallen asleep.

Then he noticed in one lone forever-long and truly insane moment: _Christ on the cross and Mary in the manger, Iruka’s gone._

Kakashi didn’t do the stupid thing, which was to call out for the other man. Instead, he stumbled out of bed and went for his clothes… and found almost everything was there, except his God damn boots. He was seething and spitting curses as he dressed in record time, running down the staircase in only his socks. He was flabbergasted – and then infuriated – to find that his horse was gone –

_Fucking hell, Iruka had taken his horse._

He was in the crossroads about a mile away from the Sarutobi homestead when he finally saw another person, thankfully a man on a horse, who he quickly called over – and who he then yanked off the creature and knocked straight unconscious.

Kakashi swung up into the saddle and rapidly considered just where Iruka would go.

He’d leave town, that’s for sure. 

The best way to leave town was the railroad; the man could hop the train, head north.

He was pushing the horse too hard, hearing the steed furiously huff and puff, but Kakashi couldn’t think about how much pain the horse was in – when he was trying to understand _what the fuck had just happened_.

Had Iruka been playing him? Had the whole night been a façade, too?

Fuck, had he finally let someone in – when they were actually a crazy monster of a person?

Kakashi pulled hard on the reins as they neared the train station, not wanting the horse to plow into the building. He could hear from a distance that the train itself was already starting to move away from Konoha - _the eight o’clock train, the one that goes to Kirigakure, far up north_ \- and he saw it without any effort at all. The train was one of the newer models made since the war ended: a huge five passenger car locomotive, painted sleek black, moving metal machinery, spewing huge clouds of smoke from burning coal. 

And it was leaving Konoha.

Well, fuck that.

Kakashi took his chance. He imagined Iruka wanted out of Konoha, and this was the fastest way to go about fleeing the area. 

He felt frightfully validated when he suddenly spotted _his own horse_ lingering by the train station, looking more than a bit lost and alone.

He forced his stolen horse to chase after the train; he jumped on it with years of skill directing his muscles, bones, fury. Kakashi winced badly when his shoeless feet hit the metal, but he found he couldn’t force himself to care too much. He was keeping himself alive and alert and mobile through endless rage and humiliation. He went through the passenger part of the train with the same wrathful energy that he’d used during his outlaw days. 

Almost on instinct, the passengers averted eyes, held their prized possessions closer.

And, then, there – in the far back – there was Iruka’s black hat –

Kakashi went after him.

But the man didn’t move, wasn’t looking at him, and Kakashi grabbed his shoulder roughly, spinning him – and _found it wasn’t Iruka_ , although it very much was the WANTED vigilante’s hat, the same one that had gone missing three days ago.

Still forcibly holding onto the civilian, Kakashi snarled, “Where is he? Where did he go?”

The terrified man jerked his shaking hand towards the very back of the train, towards the caboose, and Kakashi went there at an obscene speed. He tore open the back door of the train, the scream of the machine hitting his ears, the smoke collecting in the air and clouding his senses. He was about to climb the ladder to the top of the train, his rage overwhelming him, when –

There was a loud, long whistle.

Kakashi froze – and then turned.

He looked at the railroad tracks behind the train, back towards the station and Konoha.

There, sitting high and pretty on Kakashi’s sleek sheriff’s mare, was Iruka Umino.

_He was wearing Kakashi’s white broad-brimmed hat… and Kakashi’s boots, too._

Before Kakashi could literally fall apart at the seams and scream himself hoarse, Iruka rose a hand into the air, then pressed it to his lips, and then…

… blew Kakashi a kiss.

Even though Iruka was an increasing impossible distance for Kakashi to see him perfectly, especially with his half-blind eye, he could have sworn that Iruka’s expression _wasn’t_ malicious, or sinister, or cruel.

Really, everything that Kakashi _could see_ … suggested a friend waving goodbye.

He slumped over the back railing, totally exhausted. His feet were beginning to hurt. He was sweating so much it reminded him of his outlaw days when he was on the run escaping the law. He wiped at his forehead, pushing back his white-silver hair, before he slowly brought up his right hand…

… and waved farewell to Iruka.

He wasn’t sure if he would be able to see Iruka’s response considering the distance and his bad eye.

But, then, surprising the life out of Kakashi and reigniting his stressed soul, Iruka got Kakashi’s sweet sheriff horse to rear back on two legs, looking right out of a magnificent oil painting.

_God, he looks pretty even from here._

As the train raced away in the opposite direction, Kakashi watched as the ever-diminishing vision of Iruka waved at him once again, blew him one last kiss, and then soared over the horizon.

Well, at least he didn’t have to take Iruka to jail… not today, anyway.

This way he’d get to see Iruka again.

Soon, maybe.

Secretly, deep inside, Kakashi savored the idea of Iruka wandering the west, riding Kakashi’s horse and wearing both his boots and his white sheriff’s hat.

He took out the cigarettes that he’d stolen from Iruka when the man was sleeping and lit one with Iruka’s matches, smoking silently on the back of the moving train.

Yeah, he’d see Iruka soon. Real soon.


End file.
